


The Autumn Crown

by turtle_paced



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Characters Added As They Appear - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 12:33:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2150868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtle_paced/pseuds/turtle_paced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No Red Wedding AU. When the forces of the North fell upon Moat Cailin on the first day of the century, they were betrayed by men they counted as their own – the Freys and the Boltons. Severely wounded and presumed dead, Robb must regroup and somehow retake his kingdom, while Catelyn and Arya must flee the Riverlands in search of safety or vengeance (either will do). The War of Five Kings is far from over, and more troubles are on the horizon…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Catelyn I

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an experiment with shorter chapters. Hopefully this will translate into more frequent updates. Either way, I hope people enjoy! No particular warnings yet, but speaking of...
> 
> NOTE ON CHARACTER DEATH: Unlike rape, violence, and abuse, I will not be warning for character death in these header notes or in the tags. It might happen in this fic. It might not. This is the only warning I'll give you. If you're someone who finds major character death distressing, keep this in mind.

The festivities, such as they were, dragged on interminably. The food was poor. The music was worse – though still preferable to the conversation.

“I’ll say this much for Ned Stark,” Catelyn had heard one man whisper early in the evening, loud enough that she had clearly been meant to hear it, “he knew not to wed the first stupid slut he fucked on campaign.”

She did not turn to look at the speaker. She would not give him the satisfaction.

The hall reeked, and Ser Ryman especially, from all the wine-sweat. Roose Bolton was almost pleasant company by comparison – he spoke as little as he ate, but he was not as sour-smelling or sour-talking as Ser Ryman. Not that Catelyn could hear a great deal over the ever-louder pounding of drums and blowing of horns. Tomorrow morning she should like this band to play and inflict her present suffering on all those sleeping off tonight’s wine.

Catelyn could only draw some small comfort from two things: Robb, who was dancing with every Frey girl at the Twins as promised, enduring the insults thrown at him with good grace, behaving in a manner that would make his father proud; and the fact that Edmure seemed to find his bride more than tolerable.

They all had to stay at the table, however, on pain of further insult, until Lord Walder saw fit to release them from their torment and end this particular hell. _One down,_ Catelyn thought, _and six more yet to endure._

“A wedding needs a bedding!” Lord Walder cried eventually, and Catelyn knew it was almost over then. _Thank all the gods._ Edmure was carted off by Lord Walder’s many daughters and granddaughters, followed by a blushing, giggling Roslin. Her goodsister. At least two people were enjoying this.

After another hour of excruciating pleasantries amongst increasingly drunken men, a message came for Robb. Whatever the news was, his mouth tightened to read it. Catelyn saw him turn slightly to Lord Walder, as if considering leaving the table. _You cannot, Robb_ , she thought desperately. _No matter what, we must see this through to the very end._ Fortunately, Robb realised it as well as she did. If he could resist the temptation to go fetch Grey Wind, he could hold off attending to this message, whatever it was.

And not soon enough, it was over. Robb hurried away as soon as possible, trailed by Dacey Mormont and Smalljon Umber – though not, Catelyn noted, in the direction of the suite the Freys had given him for the duration of his stay. She ached to follow him, to find out where he was going and why, but her king had made it clear: her presence was no longer required in his councils. _I have lost my last son to a crown._

She returned to her room and prepared for bed, since there was nothing else for her to do, nowhere she was needed. But no sooner had she brushed out her hair than a knock came at the door. “Lady Catelyn?” She recognised Dacey Mormont’s voice. “The king has sent for you.”

“Why?” she asked, while they walked from the Twins through the camps. Dacey shook her head, however. _Not here_. She had changed from her gown back into boiled leather, a sight that brought unaccountable relief to Catelyn’s heart.

 _We have guest right_ , she told herself. _There is no danger._  

But what could possibly be so dire that Robb summoned her from her room all the way to the camps? What was happening that he did not want to speak of it where Freys might hear?

The reason was immediately apparent once Catelyn entered the royal tent. Catelyn knew her at once. Catelyn would have known her anywhere. 

“Arya!”

“Mother!” Arya flung herself from the table where she’d been eating and into Catelyn’s arms. Her daughter, the one she had given up for dead, even started to cry silently on her shoulder. 

“You’re alive,” Catelyn said. She’d only recently given up all hope of getting even one of her lost daughters back. Arya she had thought dead, and Sansa forever out of her reach, forcibly wed to Tyrion Lannister. But she had been wrong. She was so happy to be wrong. “You’re alive. Let me look at you.” She pushed Arya back slightly, keeping her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.

Her daughter was taller and skinnier than she had been when she left Winterfell, ragged and filthy. “My hair,” Arya began nervously, but Catelyn cut her off.

“I don’t care about your hair.” It was a truly awful cut, badly lopsided and far too close to her scalp on one side. It looked as though it had been hacked off with a dull knife. But if shaving her head bald helped her survive, Catelyn would have forgiven even that. Arya had clearly been passing for a boy, and hair grew back. She pulled her daughter back close. “My precious girl.”

“The Hound brought her here,” Robb said, and looking at him over her daughter’s shoulder, for an instant Catelyn could see the boy who’d taught his sister to climb trees. For an instant, she had her son back too, not just the good opinion of the King in the North.

But even joy could not override her concern. “What did you do with him?”

“Did you kill him?” Arya asked suddenly, breaking away from Catelyn. “He said you should kill him. _I’d_ kill him.” 

“I paid your ransom,” Robb said, unable to entirely hide his shock at his younger sister’s violent words. “I gave him safe passage from the camps.” He could not extend guest right, as they were guests themselves. Safe passage was all he could give. _And more than the any Lannister dog deserves,_ Catelyn thought. Even if Clegane _had_ brought her daughter to her. The Hound was a Lannister man - could this be Tyrion Lannister's idea of making good on his promises to exchange her girls for Ser Jaime?

Her daughter’s grey eyes narrowed, and Catelyn did not know what she was thinking. “He said you should either take him into service or kill him,” Arya said.

“I’ll not take him into service,” Robb said, sounding more the king. “Fearsome as his reputation is, the Hound is not welcome here. I don't take deserters, much less Lannister cast-offs.”

Arya nodded. “Then you should kill him.” Then her eyes widened again, and she looked at Catelyn, as if terrified of what her mother would think.

And Catelyn was alarmed, it was true. No child should speak so casually of murder or execution, whichever it was that Arya had meant. _What has she seen, this year past?_ “Arya, sweetling, your brother gave the Hound safe passage. He cannot go back on it now.” Certainly he shouldn’t go back on it, at this wedding, an apology for Robb’s earlier disregard of binding agreements.

“Who’s Queen Jeyne?” Arya asked suddenly. “The men here keep toasting her.” 

“Jeyne is my lady wife,” Robb said with a smile. “So she’s Queen in the North, and your goodsister.”

“Oh.” Arya’s nose wrinkled, apparently at the thought of her brother being a man wedded, and Catelyn smiled then herself. It felt strange on her face after so long. There had been little and less for her to smile about since Ned was murdered. “Can I meet her?”

Just like that, Robb’s smile vanished again. “No,” he said. “Not for a long time either, most like. I left my lady at Riverrun. I have to go to war again on the morrow, Arya.”

“No,” Arya gasped. “No, you can’t, I just found you! You can’t go!”

“I can and I must,” Robb replied, voice halfway between sorrow and irritation. Kings quickly grew unused to hearing _you can’t_. Catelyn had once thought that kings did not have mothers, not truly, and it seemed they did not suffer wilful younger sisters gladly either.

“You won’t be alone,” Catelyn reassured her daughter, taking her hand again. “You’ll come to Seagard with me.” That comfortable captivity would be a deal more comfortable when she had her daughter with her. _My lost girl._ _She found us._ Robb surely wouldn’t separate them, for all his talk about keeping his treasures in different places. “And in the meantime, Robb will take back Winterfell for us. We’ll all be able to go home then.”

“And I’ll put Theon’s head on a spike,” Robb added. 

“Why Theon’s?”

Catelyn and Robb looked at each other. “Arya, my sweet,” Catelyn began, fearing the answer, “Do you know what happened to Winterfell?” She did not know which would be worse, telling the news fresh, or giving further details.  _Treachery and murder. My precious boys hung up outside the gates of their own home._

“At Harrenhal they said it fell,” Arya said, her eyes very cold. She was still holding Catelyn’s hand tightly. Her grip was strong and hard, and when Catelyn looked down she saw the scratches and torn nails on Arya’s hands. “They said Bran and Rickon were dead.”

“They are,” Catelyn said, feeling all that grief anew at having to tell her daughter. “It was Theon Greyjoy’s work. He took Winterfell, killed your brothers, and then put the castle to the torch.”

“Theon did that?” Arya had never cared much for Theon, Catelyn knew. Jon Snow hadn’t, and Arya adored her bastard brother and had followed his lead in disliking Ned's hostage. Greyjoy, for his part, had ignored most of Catelyn’s younger children right up until he’d murdered two. _Robb will put his head on a spike_. It was no solution of any sort and it wouldn’t bring her sons back, but her remaining children ( _children!_ Catelyn had more than one with her again!) would have their justice.

“Yes,” Catelyn said. “Theon did that.”

Neither she nor Robb spoke while Arya absorbed that information. Outside, the dregs of the celebrations carried on, the off-key voices of the hardest drinkers still ringing out across the camp. Catelyn had expected more immediate rage, but the younger of her daughters seemed to be carefully contemplating Theon’s fate. “A spike’s too good for him,” she said at last.

“I agree,” Robb said. “But I must execute him lawfully all the same, and throw all the ironmen from our lands. Will you go to Seagard with Mother while I do?” It was no more a request than his plea for her to go to Seagard had been.

“I want to stay with Mother,” Arya said. Catelyn smiled again. It felt so strange, the mixture of joy and sorrow. Joy to have her daughter back; sorrow to recount yet again the deaths of Bran and Rickon. For Arya, to have Arya back, she would rather smile. Her daughter would need her to be strong.

“You will leave with her tomorrow morning,” Robb promised her. “For tonight, stay here with Dacey. We’ll return as soon as dawn breaks.” It near broke Catelyn’s heart to leave her girl again so soon, but she understood. Their absence overnight from the castle would be noticed, and Robb didn’t want anyone to know they had found Arya until they were all well away from the Twins. Walder Frey would not be above demanding Arya’s hand for one of his boys again, and demanding Arya herself as a ward. Catelyn saw the sense in it, else she would not leave. Far better to tear herself away tonight so that she might have Arya with her for the weeks and months to come. 

Arya dropped Catelyn’s hand only to throw herself at her brother. “I missed you,” she whispered. Catelyn thought she saw tears in her daughter's eyes again. “Don’t die. You’re not allowed to die.”

“I don’t plan to,” Robb said, returning her embrace. “We’ll be back at daybreak. Both of us. I promise.” He disentangled himself and stood.

Catelyn knelt to throw her own arms around her daughter then. “I am so glad you’ve come back to us,” she whispered. “Just one more night apart, we can both do that. You’ll be safe now.” She stayed like that for a minute, with her arms around the daughter she never thought she’d hold again, heedless of her dirty clothing. “Goodnight, Arya. Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Mother.”

It was hard for Catelyn to let go, much less to turn and leave, but turn and leave she did. _Daybreak. Just until daybreak, and then I will have my daughter back for true._ Once outside, Robb did something he had not done for a long time – he offered her his arm. Catelyn took it, and felt she might yet weep for joy. “How?” she asked quietly, trusting the noise of the camps to keep their conversation away from prying ears.

“Ser Raynald recognised the Hound,” her son told her. “He wouldn’t know Arya from a block of wood, but he sent the message up anyway and kept them both out of sight.”

And then he had sat through that horrible wedding knowing that his sister might be just outside the castle. Truly, she had a son to be proud of. _And I still have him. He is not lost to me after all. Nor is my second daughter._

“I fear she has suffered much,” Catelyn said. “You caught her mention of Harrenhal?”

“Yes.” Robb’s face was grim. “Was she there under Clegane’s occupation or Bolton’s, I wonder? Either way, it would have been a brutal experience. And then found and taken by the Hound somehow.”

“Gods alone know how she escaped King’s Landing.” That would have been the first step of Arya’s journey. And how long had she spent in the Riverlands? “It was the Hound who brought her here, you say? I thought he had turned craven at the Blackwater.” If so, how on earth did he get his hands on her Arya? She could easily believe it to be some ruse of the Imp's.

“I have no doubt you’ll get the story from her, Mother. You’ll have time enough.”

“Yes,” Catelyn said. “Yes, I will.”


	2. Arya I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no particular content notes. Carry on.

Her mother didn’t hate her. Her mother didn’t know everything, but she said she didn’t care about Arya’s hair, at least.

“Why did they have to leave?” she asked the lady Robb had left to look after her. Dacey, Robb had called her, but Arya didn’t know what house she belonged to. She had to be highborn; she spoke like one. And yet she had leather armour and a morningstar.

Dacey looked at her, sizing her up. “His grace wants you to go with your lady mother to Seagard, Princess Arya,” she said. “Lady Catelyn will likely explain all this to you on the morrow, and better than I could. King Robb will see you safe no matter what happens, but if nobody knows you are here, nobody will ask for custody of you as a favour. People would notice if he and Lady Catelyn stayed here rather than in the Twins.”

If it meant she got to stay with her mother, Arya supposed she could wait another night. She had her real pack now, even if Robb was going to ride off again so soon. Her brother would put Theon’s head on a spike, but until she knew he was dead, she decided to add him to her list anyway. If Robb didn’t execute Theon, Arya would take care of it. _He should have killed the Hound._

Someone brought her a basin of warm water to wash with, and Arya did so without complaint. Mother mightn’t have cared how dirty she was tonight, but she’d start caring again sometime. _Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, the Tickler, the Hound, Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Theon Greyjoy,_ she repeated to herself as she bathed, trying to get used to the new order. _Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, the Tickler, the Hound, Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Theon Greyjoy._

It was getting to be a lot to remember, but she would.

They brought her clean clothing too. Boys’ clothing, which Arya was grateful for. When she mentioned it, Dacey just said, “This is an army. We have clothing for grown women and clothing for young boys, but none for young girls.”

Dacey was actually Dacey Mormont, Arya found out. “And they let you fight?” she asked, surprised.

“They didn’t _let_ me,” Lady Dacey said with a smile. “I demanded it. Other lords’ heirs were riding with his grace. I’m the heir to Bear Island, and I can use a morningstar as well as any man, so I saw no reason why I should not join the company of my peers in service to my king.”

Arya mulled this over for a bit. “Your lady mother spoke in my support,” Dacey added after a few seconds. “She insisted, over the protests of the Greatjon.”

“I don’t believe you.” Her mother had always got so upset when Arya had done anything _wild_ , as she called it. Her mother was always proper, like Sansa. She wore nice dresses and did embroidery and didn’t like getting dirty. She wouldn’t want another woman to fight in a war. She would be so angry when she found out Arya had killed people.

Lady Dacey seemed to think that Arya’s reaction was funny. “On my family’s honour, Princess Arya. Your mother argued my right to fight at King Robb’s side.”

_Princess Arya._ She’d said it already, but Arya hadn’t really noticed. “I’m not a princess,” she said.

“I’m afraid you are, Princess Arya. Your eldest brother is the king, and before they died, your younger brothers were named princes, and so you are a princess.” Lady Dacey smiled, and Arya decided she was too tired to fight back right at the moment. It should be safe enough to sleep here. As soon as she said she wanted to sleep now, a blanket was fetched for her.

The pallet made up for her felt very nearly as comfortable as her bed in Winterfell ever had. She drifted off to sleep soon after, and when she woke her mother was at her side.

“Good morning, Arya,” her mother said.

In the near-dawn light, helped by a candle on a nearby table, Arya could see how tired her mother really was. She looked much older now, lines around her eyes and mouth that Arya had never seen before. Last night Arya had noticed the deep scars on her mother’s hands, but had been too afraid to ask what had happened. “You’re still here,” Arya said, feeling stupid even for being surprised.

“Of course I’m here,” her mother said. “I won’t leave you again, not if I can help it.”

“Don’t say that,” Arya snapped. “Everyone who says that leaves.”

Her mother looked like she wanted to argue, but she just nodded instead. “Would you like to hear how we are going to leave camp? I see you have the clothes for it already.”

They were going to have Arya ride out dressed as a squire, she explained over a small breakfast, until they were well away from the Twins. “Will I have to wear a dress after that?” Arya asked.

“Not unless you want to,” her mother said, to her continued surprise. “When we arrive at Seagard, yes, you will wear a dress, but while we are on the road there are more important things.”

“Why do I have to sneak out?”

That made her mother sigh. “Arya, my sweet, I won’t lie. This war is not going well for us at the moment.”

“Because Winterfell fell,” Arya remembered.  _Winterfell fell._ Her home was gone.

“And other reasons,” her mother said. “Your brother does not entirely trust the Freys, and he has to take measures to keep us all safe. For the moment, you are safest while nobody believes we have you. That will change once we are well away from the Twins.” 

A guard stepped into the tent, interrupting them. “The King approaches.”

Her mother stood, and gestured for Arya to stand as well. For an instant Arya wondered why, but then she remembered that Robb was the king now. He wasn’t just her brother.

He looked older too, even though he still didn’t wear a beard. “Mother, Arya.”

They curtsied. To her own brother. Robb didn’t even look embarrassed.

“If you’ll excuse me, your grace, I need to oversee the preparations for our departure,” Mother said. “May I inform Lord Jason of Arya’s presence in our company?”

“Of course. I would not have Lord Jason excluded from this confidence.”

“Well, then,” her mother said, a very sad look on her face. “Goodbye, Robb. We will see you again at Winterfell.”

“I promise, Mother.”

She smiled and left Arya alone with her brother, which also had to be a risk. They hadn’t been alone even last night before Mother came from the castle. He’d left her waiting while he dealt with the Hound – and she still couldn’t believe Robb hadn’t killed him.

“I wanted to see you before you left,” he said to her. “Gods, it’s been a year, and I have to go again straight away. Promise me you’ll listen to Mother, Arya. She needs you. Don’t make too much trouble.”

“I won’t,” Arya said. She’d do her best. Truly she would. But Mother probably wanted Sansa more than she wanted Arya, especially now. And she couldn’t be like Sansa. She’d never been able to be like Sansa.

“I mean it, Arya. These last few months have been very difficult for her, perhaps more than they’ve been for me. You know that Grandfather is dead?” 

Arya shook her head.

“He passed away not long ago,” Robb told her. “And Mother has done some…foolish things. With the best of intentions, but foolish all the same. I – I can’t help her. I have to be king, and kings cannot forgive even their mothers all their misdeeds. So look after her, or let her look after you. For my sake, please.”

“All right.” Arya shuffled her feet, feeling awkward in front of Robb as she didn’t often feel at Winterfell. Robb was her oldest brother, and now he felt older still. “You’re still not allowed to die.” 

“I'll do my very best." He ruffled Arya’s hair, like Jon might have. “By the old gods and the new, I will do my very best, and by the time I am done we'll have our home back. Now I must go, before any more suspicions are raised. We'll see each other in Winterfell, Arya. Remember that."

He swept back out. The guards at the door motioned that she should stay where she was for the moment. Soon enough, though, she was handed a bag of gear (she looked inside to find more clothing and some food) and ushered to where her mother was already mounted up. Arya was given a smaller horse, closer to the rear. Nobody paid any attention to her at all, and in the chaos of Robb’s departing army, their entire column set off on the road to Seagard virtually unnoticed.

Arya ached to go ride next to her mother, even though her mother was riding next to Lord Mallister. The last time they’d been riding, Arya hadn’t been old enough for a proper horse, and kept urging her pony ahead because Mother rode _slowly_. They were riding faster now, but Mother gestured that Arya should still stay back. Why was she being so cautious? They were surrounded by Mallister men, and Robb wouldn’t send them with people he didn’t trust.

It was only when they stopped for the evening meal that her mother finally beckoned her over. “Lord Jason,” she said formally, “may I present my daughter, Princess Arya?”

Jason Mallister climbed to his feet. He stood tall, for an old man. “It is my honour, princess,” he said with a bow. “You are as welcome in my home as your lady mother is.”

Arya tried to think of what to say. Sansa would have known. “Thank you, Lord Mallister,” she said. It wasn’t right or charming, but it was the best she could do.

“May I speak to my daughter alone, my lord?”

“Of course, my lady. Princess Arya.” With another brief bow, Lord Mallister moved to another place near the fire. 

And then Arya was alone with her mother, or as alone as any two people could be on the road. She fidgeted a little. It was her mother, after all, and Arya still had a messy haircut and was wearing breeches.

“Sit with me,” her mother said. “I’ve missed you so.”

Arya sat.

“I must ask you, how is it that you came to find us? Was it Tyrion Lannister who arranged it?”

Arya shook her head. “Nobody arranged it,” she said. “The Hound kidnapped me. From the Brotherhood.”

Her mother looked surprised to hear that. “ _Kidnapped_ you? But I heard the man turned craven at the Blackwater.”

“He did. He’s scared of fire.” She could remember, so clearly, how he’d shied away from Lord Beric’s flaming sword. The Hound was craven, and a murderer. Robb should have killed him.

But her mother was already asking another question. “So he did not…take you…on the orders of the Lannisters? You were with this Brotherhood before then?”

“He just wanted the money Robb would give him.” Or so he’d said, and Arya believed it.

“Then, Arya – who had you, all this time?”

“No one,” she said. “They tried to catch me, when Father – when Father – but I ran.” She didn’t think her mother would want to hear about Syrio Forel, or Needle, and especially not the stableboy. “Yoren found me – “

“Yoren?” 

“From the Night’s Watch. He helped me get out of the city because the Queen was looking for me and had guards on all the gates, but the Queen’s men killed him when they were looking for Gendry and then we had to go to Harrenhal but we escaped from there too.” The words had started pouring from her mouth. _Stupid._ At least she’d stopped herself before she told Mother about the weasel soup or the guard on the way out. _Stupid! Mother can’t fix it. She can’t even know, or she won't want me anymore._  

Her mother just looked stricken, like Arya had hit her. “You’ve been running all this time? Since your father was first arrested?”

Arya nodded.

“You’ve done very well,” her mother said. “I am very proud of you. I just have to know for sure. The Lannisters never had you? Not at all?” 

“No, Mother,” Arya said obediently, and tried not to flinch away from the hard look in her mother’s eyes.

“I’m not angry with you, sweetling,” her mother said, realising Arya’s worry. “When this all began, the Lannister queen told us she held you. What peace negotiations we managed to open all included your return, and your sister’s too. I am angry because the Lannisters have been dealing in bad faith all this time.”

Arya remembered something she’d heard on the road. “They said you set the Kingslayer free when Robb took him captive,” she said. “But you wouldn’t do that.”

Her mother didn’t reply immediately, and Arya realised the truth. “Why?” she demanded. “You should have killed him too!” 

“Dead, he was no use to me,” her mother said in a very final tone. “He was no use to anyone dead. But both the Kingslayer and his brother swore that were Ser Jaime returned to King’s Landing, he would be exchanged for you and Sansa. So yes, Arya, I freed him, and sent him under guard to King’s Landing. That is the truth.”

That made Arya feel almost as ashamed as she was angry. Of course her mother had a reason. But there were more important things than the stupid Kingslayer. “Where is Sansa?” she asked. “If you freed the Kingslayer, you should have got Sansa back, right?”

“Oh, Arya.” There were tears in her mother’s eyes again. “The Lannisters broke their promises twice over. They never had you, they wed Sansa to the Imp, and I freed the Kingslayer for nothing.”

Her mother was crying. _Her mother_ was _crying._ She was trying not to, but Arya could see. Mother had wept a bit last night, but that was different; she had been happy, not sad. “I’m sorry,” Mother said, and wiped her eyes. Just like that she was back to normal. “Can you forgive your foolish mother?”

Arya just sat down next to her, and they watched the men around the campfire talk. She couldn't say yes, not even for Sansa. Mother had let the  _Kingslayer_ go. But she did still want her mother.

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, the Tickler, the Hound, Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, the Kingslayer, the Imp, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Theon Greyjoy,_ Arya thought. They broke their promises, took Sansa, and made her mother cry. They deserved places on her list too.

_Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, the Tickler, the Hound, Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, the Kingslayer, the Imp, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Theon Greyjoy,_ she repeated in her head, long into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback of any sort is loved!


	3. Tyrion I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now we hit some warnings. This chapter references (but does not depict - nothing happens, rest assured) what some people believe should be happening in Tyrion and Sansa's marriage, which would be something like half a dozen different types of non-con and dub-con. It also reflects the Westerosi belief that Sansa is capable of consent at her age and in her situation.

It had been a long time since Tyrion had seen his father quite so livid.

Oh, he did a good job hiding it, but Lord Tywin couldn’t entirely conceal the tension in his hands and shoulders, nor the paleness of his face. If Tyrion didn’t think he would shortly suffer for his father’s bad mood, he might even find it amusing. Nothing had angered Tywin Lannister quite so much since Jaime had joined the Kingsguard.

The King was conspicuous in this meeting only through his absence, and on the whole Tyrion thought this a very good thing indeed. What Joff didn’t know wouldn’t hurt anyone standing near enough to be a target of his irrational rage.

“We must make arrangements for a somewhat lengthier campaign in the Riverlands than anticipated,” Lord Tywin announced, in a very tight voice. “We are still well-positioned in the field to take advantage of any chaos that may occur, but the cleaning up is likely to drag on for some time.”

Cersei looked somewhat surprised at this announcement; Varys did not. That told Tyrion more or less everything he needed to know. “Chaos?” Tyrion asked. “Should we be expecting more chaos in the Riverlands, then? Last I heard, most of the Northern forces were preparing to move, well, north.”

“There will be changes,” Lord Tywin said. “I am recalling Ser Gregor to King’s Landing.”

So he could be served on a platter to Oberyn Martell, no doubt, and better than the Mountain deserved. It was the chaos in the Riverlands that interested Tyrion. He gave his report and mulled over the issue at length, scarcely absorbing the details of the courses to be served and the singers to be performing at Joffrey’s wedding. The expenses of such things interested him, but the more precise details not so much, unless they had the potential to cause a duel or mortal insult to the Tyrells. Chaos in the Riverlands was _far_ more interesting.

When his father dismissed the meeting, Tyrion stayed behind.

“Yes?” Lord Tywin asked. “What is it?”

“You were planning to assassinate Robb Stark,” Tyrion said. “What happened?”

His father didn’t even bother to deny it. “I have persuaded certain of Stark’s bannermen to see their futures lie with House Lannister,” he said. “They are in too deep to turn on us now, even if they have abandoned the most prudent plan.”

“And this…most prudent plan…what was that?”

“An arrow at Edmure Tully’s wedding feast,” Lord Tywin said. “Along the way there may have been some embellishments, of which I did not approve. Much as I do not approve of their current plan.”

“Yes, traitors make such unreliable allies,” Tyrion replied.

Lord Tywin ignored the comment. “Do not forget that you have your own part to play in this design, Tyrion,” he said sternly. “With Robb Stark dead, as he soon will be, and his brothers before him, Sansa Stark is heiress to the North. Get her with child, and the sooner the better. The North will want their Stark come spring.”

 _Come winter_ , Tyrion thought. _The North will want their Stark for winter._

Instead, he said, “We are planning to murder her brother. I cannot imagine that will endear me to her overmuch.”

Lord Tywin waved it off. “Endear you to her? Your squeamishness is ridiculous. We have always been planning to kill her brother. I fail to see how this is any different. Whether Robb Stark meets his end on the field of battle or with an arrow through his neck at a wedding feast, neither death will render Sansa Stark any more fond of you, or any less capable of bearing children.” 

Tyrion made no reply.

“Or,” Lord Tywin continued, with a particularly frosty glare, “is it that you dream of winning her affections? If that is the case, put that notion aside. It has no place in politics. No woman will ever want you for anything but your money, and the Stark girl will likely never want you at all.”

 _I don’t want her hatred._ “I’m the one who has to live with her,” he said. “And you would have me rule the North through her. Forgive me for thinking that it might be easier if Lady Sansa did not utterly despise me.”

“She is a young woman,” Lord Tywin said. “A very young woman. Your sister tells me Lady Sansa is completely cowed and weak of both wits and will. She will do as she is told.”

“I do not wish to force her,” Tyrion said quietly. “Joffrey has had her beaten for every victory Robb Stark won. If the Northerners ever find out what she has suffered, they will never accept a child of our marriage as their overlord. They would sooner kill me.”

“Then they shall not find out,” Lord Tywin said. “What the Northerners do not know cannot hurt us.”

Tyrion, knowing that there would be no winning this argument, left. He spent the rest of the day counting coppers and juggling accounts, as his father had told him to do. _We all do what Lord Tywin tells us_ , he thought bitterly. _From King Joffrey on down, we dance to his tune._

He knew well that Lady Sansa _would_ do what she was told. If Tyrion said he wished to bed her, she would let him, probably without so much as a word of protest. Then she would clean herself up, weep once she was alone, pray for his death in her godswood, and carry on.

Lady Sansa was determined to survive, and she was determined to hate every Lannister and Lannister ally from now until the end of the Long Night. _Weak of will, sweet sister? Hardly._

His father was right about this much, at least: Lady Sansa would always despise him. And pity him, and fear him. _And if I never want to?_ he heard her soft voice ask once more in his mind, and remembered how he’d tried in vain to get her to kneel at their wedding. She had the same unbending pride as her parents had.

Cersei really was a fool. In this case it was of little enough account, but it did not speak well of her judgment.

It was a lost cause, but he could not bear the thought of Lady Sansa’s accusing eyes following him around his home for the rest of his days. He could not do it. _I never want to._ Who would ever _want_ to, with him, save he had given them coin?

When he returned to his chambers – their shared chambers – there were signs of his lady wife’s presence there. The high harp in the corner; she was a decent player of the instrument, though in terms of musical gifts her greatest strength was her voice. Her jewel-boxes; working out which pieces she preferred was a trivial matter of observation. A piece of unfinished embroidery; closer inspection revealed a place where Sansa had pricked her finger and bled on the linen, a tiny rust-red-brown spot in a pattern of flowers. 

He had never lived with anyone like this before. As long as they were in the Red Keep, he could hardly escape her.

He didn’t want her to hate him.

Lady Sansa returned to their rooms before the evening meal, pale and composed and wearing a gown of lilac silk Joffrey didn’t often beat her in, since he liked the colour on her. “My lord,” she said, when she realised he too was there. That was all. She never gave him anything she wasn’t specifically asked for.

“My lady,” he replied. When she realised nothing more was forthcoming, she picked up the embroidery Tyrion had examined before, the one she’d shed blood over. 

Should he tell her? _My lady, I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but my father has recently engineered the assassination of your brother at the hands of several of his bannermen. I only just found out about it, of course, and I naturally have nothing to do with the plot._

 _No, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m sorry, my lady. Truly sorry. At least it will not happen at your uncle’s wedding, as originally intended, and your lady mother should be spared the sight of her only remaining son dead with an arrow through his chest._

Yes, that would improve matters.

They sat in silence until the dinner was brought in, Sansa sewing and Tyrion reading. For some married couples that might have been entirely comfortable. Tyrion could not wait for the food to arrive and later, for the time to retire, so he could fall asleep and spare himself more of his wife’s cold silence.

He wanted Shae. Gods, he wanted Shae, who was no stranger to warmth and pleasure and had a want for his coin, at the least.

Lady Sansa left for the godswood after the evening meal, and Tyrion felt that he could at last breathe freely. When she returned, her gown smelling of damp earth rather than smoke and perfume, the stifling weight of guilt returned with her.

Robb Stark was his brother by marriage. Tyrion knew of a plot to murder him and yet planned to do nothing to prevent it. There were those who would call that kinslaying, though the septons were divided on whether the Seven would as well.

It took two days for him to crack. Two long days in which he could hardly look at Sansa, and their forced proximity had been unpleasant enough for them both already. She inquired briefly if anything was troubling him, and visibly failed to care about the answer. His problems could not touch her heart.

It might be just as well, for Lady Sansa had problems enough already.

 _One heart and one soul_ , Tyrion thought bitterly while Sansa lay awake and fully clothed beside him that night. _Let no man come between us, only a rebellion, two armies, and as many murderous plots as my father needs to hatch to kill her family._

Two days was all he could stand. He always had fancied that his conscience was somewhat less stunted than his growth.

Lady Sansa was truly helpless; there was naught she could do about Lord Tywin’s plans. There was nothing Tyrion himself could do, come to that, not to prevent Robb Stark from getting killed. He could, however, prepare Lady Sansa for the ill news. It would likely be easier to take coming from him rather than, say, Joffrey. Joff would use it to hurt her, and Lord Tywin would let him. There would be no reprimand for Joff and no reprieve for Sansa.

“My lady,” he said, very quietly, over another of their agonising dinners. “Lady Sansa. There is something I must tell you.”

Sansa’s pretty blue eyes were as blank as those of the dolls Cersei used to tear the heads off of when she was a child. “My lord?” she said, in an equally pretty, equally empty voice.

“Quiet, now,” he cautioned her. “You never know who is listening.” Gods knew that Varys probably was. The eunuch might scold him later, but much like Lord Tywin, Varys didn’t have to live with Lady Sansa’s grief.

“As my lord says.” He could barely hear the words over the crackling of their fire.

“My lady…I have reason to believe you should expect bad news in the next few weeks. About your brother,” he clarified, when her expression remained still and icy. For an instant her impassivity reminded him of her father, rather than her mother. _Ned Stark did as he was asked too._

“If there is bad news, it can only be that my brother has not issued a surrender,” Sansa said, still quiet, but perfectly clear and without so much as a second’s hesitation. “He is a traitor, as is my mother. I am loyal, my lord.” Joff had taught her well, whether he had meant to or not. Knowing Joff's attitude to education, not.

“I do not doubt it,” Tyrion said. Of the two lies, hers was the more convincingly delivered. “And if you plead clemency for your lady mother, King Joffrey may yet be persuaded to show mercy.” _Advised strongly by his grandfather not to needlessly antagonise the Riverlords and the Northerners for the sake of his own amusement._ Lord Tywin would have to handle Lady Catelyn himself to prevent a repeat of the Ned Stark disaster. They’d write Joff a bloody script if necessary.

Lady Sansa actually flinched away at that, and too late Tyrion realised that she must have pled for her father’s life as well. He’d just been thinking of how _that_ had turned out. “I am sorry,” he said. “Practice your words again, Lady Sansa, you may need them soon.”

She looked at him then, looked at him as she had tried not to see him since their wedding. It was a suspicious look, calculating how much harm he could do her, and the blank mask was back in place almost as soon as it had slipped. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, though whether she was thanking him for the news or the advice or just to say something inoffensive, Tyrion couldn’t tell. 

“Say nothing of it,” he said to her. “And prepare yourself for the worst, my lady. I did not want you to hear this from the king after the fact.”

“Thank you, my lord,” she said again.

Now Tyrion started to feel the stirrings of anger. He was taking a risk in telling her this, and she gave him nothing but suspicion and the most basic of courtesies in return. 

She trusted him little, loved him even less, and she was a young girl who had already lost most of her family and been deeply abused by his own. It would be wrong to lash out at her.

“They are your family still,” he said to her, in truth reminding himself, “It is not treason to love them.”

And if he had wanted an emotion from her, he got it then. “Of course it is treason, my lord,” she said, a strange, soft contempt in her eyes and voice, as though he was very stupid not to understand this very simple fact. “If you will excuse me, I must pray.”

“Of course you must,” Tyrion said, and let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and any feedback you might leave!


	4. Robb I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new content notes. Hopefully we're good to go.

Robb woke in a haze of pain and poppy. His knee – his right knee was on fire. The weight of the blanket on it was unbearable, quite aside from the collection of other aches and pains he felt. He couldn’t quite get his eyes to focus on anything, but somewhere in the distance he could hear a woman’s voice.

“Your grace? Your grace, go back to sleep.”

_The Crag,_ he thought. _Jeyne. I’m at the Crag._ He tried to sit up. Jeyne was his queen, she didn’t need to call him _your grace,_ not when they were alone. He had to tell her that. He had to make her understand that. _  
_

“Rest easily,” she said. “You’re injured, and will need all your strength in the days to come. You are safe here.”

It wasn’t Jeyne’s voice, he realised. Nor was it his mother’s, nor even Dacey Mormont’s. He didn’t know this woman at all. _Where am I?_ he tried to ask, but all that came out was a groan.

“You are in Greywater Watch, your grace,” the voice continued, as if she knew what he would want to ask. Perhaps she did. It didn’t seem so unreasonable a question. “We have summoned a maester to see to your wounds. Rest. Recover your strength. You will need it later.”

That was right. Something had gone wrong. Something terrible had happened. More than one terrible thing. He just…couldn’t quite recall…

He did not dream.

Robb woke a second time to more pain, but a clearer head and a feeling of loss as well. His right side, from his hip to his ankle, was consumed with a deep, steady pain emanating from his knee. He tried to move his it. It moved, but not easily, and not without sending a fresh bolt of agony all the way up his spine. 

Whatever noise he’d made in the effort, it attracted whoever was watching over him. “Are you awake again, your grace?” It sounded like the woman from before, but the memory of his first waking was dim.

“Yes,” he said. His mouth was dry. It was impossible to act the king flat on his back and scarcely able to move. He felt as limp as the salad the Freys had served him at Edmure’s wedding. “Yes, I’m awake.” 

“Don’t try to move your leg, your grace,” the unknown woman warned him. “The maester says you must stay still for a while yet. The injury you took is not even close to healed.”

Robb could just make her out in the corner of his eye, small and slight and clad in green. After some bustling about, she pressed a cup into his left hand. Well-watered wine, it seemed to be. With some awkwardness, he raised his head and managed to drink on his own. Some of the dregs trickled down into his untended growth of beard. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Asleep? But a day, your grace. Delirious? Four days before that, and the day before you reached us here. We are glad to see your fever broken.”

“What happened?” 

“Mischance, your grace. You took a deep wound to your knee, as you no doubt can feel. It reached the bone and damaged that as well. Your men stopped the bleeding by some miracle and carried you from the field, but the Neck is not the best place for convalescence, I fear. The wound went bad.” The woman hesitated. “The maester says…I'm sorry, I should leave this to the maester, your grace.”

“Then send the maester to me, my lady,” Robb said, “if he is not occupied treating other wounded.” And he would have to hope that he had not been lamed by this _mischance_. The wound he had taken at the Crag had healed better than Jeyne had expected. It might be that way again. He certainly hoped it would.

“As you will, your grace.” She curtsied.

He realised another thing, belatedly. “To whom do I have the honour of speaking to?” he asked. Flat on his back and hardly able to move and he still had to _try_ to act the king.

The lady curtsied again. It was not a practised movement. “Jyana Reed, your grace.”

“Thank you, Lady Jyana,” Robb said. “Please send the maester.”

The maester did not come immediately, but Robb had said that the maester should only come if he was not treating others. _More wounded. Of course there would be._ He cast his mind back. What had gone wrong? He had committed himself to his charge, Moat Cailin had been nearly done for – and then they had been attacked from the rear, he thought.

But only the Freys and the Boltons had been behind him.

Oh. 

_Gods damn it. Old gods, new gods, every god that has a hell, damn it._ Some king he was. He wished he’d never taken that crown. He just hadn’t known what else to do, what else he _could_ have done. They’d proclaimed him King. He couldn’t just leave his own men to hang for rebels. Maybe his father could have rejected them somehow without utterly alienating them in the process. Maybe. He was not sure it could be done.

His father would never have got into that particular mess to start with. The lords of the North would have all known better than to offer Eddard Stark a throne.

No, he couldn’t think like that. His father had been Warden of the North, the Lord of Winterfell, but Robb was a king. He was a man grown, too, and his father had always said that Robb should seek to be his own man. _Circumstances will change,_ his father had said to him once. _You are not me, and the lords you will deal with when you take my seat will not be the lords that I deal with now. You must always treat your bannermen justly and honourably, but you must also find your own way of doing so, your own words with which to convince them, and your own strength with which to lead them._

It did no good to lie here and think of how his father would have done better.

He’d thought Edmure’s wedding had been a rather restrained display by Lord Walder. Bad food and poor music in return for slighting his daughters? That had been uncharacteristically generous and forgiving. Robb had been glad of it at the time.

A betrayal on the field was much more in character, Robb had to admit. And with Winterfell in ruins, he could see how betraying him so might have seemed a safe choice. His mother had warned him that they would always do their utmost to back the winning side.

The Boltons, though. They were another matter. Roose Bolton was not one for petty, spiteful actions such as the Freys were wont to do. Tywin Lannister must have promised Roose Bolton the Wardenship, and Winterfell with it. Nothing else would have done.

_Roose Bolton in my father’s seat at Winterfell._ Would that Robb had a sword and the opportunity to use its edge on Bolton. He didn’t care _how_ injured he was.

First, he had to find out who else had survived. While a serious defeat, a portion at least of his armies had to remain. Enough to be a threat. And there were men left in the North still; the autumn harvests had to be near done. It was not over for him. He could still retake Winterfell. He _had_ to retake Winterfell.

Then he would put Theon to the sword, and all the Boltons and Freys he could find. 

At last the maester arrived, a fair-haired man who had the look of a fighter gone slightly to seed. “Your grace,” he said. “May I?” He motioned to Robb’s knee, and Robb nodded his permission. There were scars on the maester’s hands where the knuckles had split repeatedly in long-ago brawls, and they were not the gentlest on his wound. On his wounds, actually, he had several that he hadn’t noticed through the pain in his knee.

“They are healing well, now,” the maester said. “No more fever, your grace, and your mind seems to be clear again, if I am to believe Lady Reed, not to mention mine own eyes.”

“My knee,” Robb said.

“Yes. That is the foremost problem. The joint is damaged.”

“Will I be able to walk?” 

“Walk, yes, your grace, but with difficulty and pain. Even once it has healed, you will not be able to bend it well, which will make running and riding difficult too. It will take weeks for you to recover, and you will need a cane for the rest of your life.” 

“I’ve been crippled,” Robb said. His heart, already weighed down, dropped further. Was this how Bran had felt, when they said he would never walk again? Surely not. Robb hadn’t been told anything of the sort. He would still be able to stand and walk of his own volition; he was not dependent on others as Bran had been made in the months before his murder. Once he was healed, he would not be confined to his bed.

He would not be able to ride at the front of battle again. That posed its own difficulties. There were some commanders who rode at the rear, but Robb had never been one of them. Now he would have to do so. If he could even ride well enough to command on the field.

He would _have_ to ride well enough for that. Even if he had to use a cane to walk, even if he would never be able to fight in a battle again, he had to be able to command from atop a horse.

“I am sorry, your grace,” the maester said. “You will live, though, and I have seen many men die from such a wound and fever as you endured.”

In truth Robb did not know how he felt about that. _Jeyne. I wish Jeyne were here this time too._

When she had tended to his shoulder wound, she had said often that she believed he would return to his full strength. Now that he would not recover to that extent, he wondered what she would say. She had wed a hale man. Now Robb was broken and defeated.

Gods, Jeyne. If his army had been defeated – and he needed to speak to his lords to hear the extent to which they had been scattered – what was to become of Riverrun? Of Seagard?

He sent the maester away and called for his bannermen. Maege Mormont should be here at least. Galbart Glover. Howland Reed, of course. He had not seen either Jon Umber, great or small, nor Dacey Mormont, nor Wendel Manderly.

Neither Brynden Tully nor Jason Mallister would simply allow besiegers into their castles by the front gates. If the castles fell, well, his mother and Jeyne would make valuable hostages – Arya too. _We just found her,_ he thought bitterly. _From Harrenhal to hostage again._ Tywin Lannister was like to marry his mother and sister off to whoever would take them, just as he had forcibly wed Sansa to his own son.

That was if they even survived the sieges that must surely be the next item on the Lannister agenda, as soon as they received word of Robb's defeat.

Lord Glover, Lady Mormont, and Lord Reed were rather quicker to come see him than the maester was. “It is good to see you well, your grace,” Galbart said.

_It is good to see me alive, he means._ “What of our army?” he asked. The royal act was coming back to him, now that he was no longer on his back but propped up with pillows. He still did not feel quite _right_ , and he couldn't tell exactly why. Something was missing. “What happened after I was carried from the field?”

“We were defeated and scattered,” Lady Mormont reported. “We’ve lost about half our men, at least, as many to the swamps as the Boltons and the Freys. Moat Cailin fell, but it is still occupied by our enemies.”

And no doubt Roose Bolton would fortify Moat Cailin better than the ironmen had. So in truth Robb had gone  _backwards_ in his quest to retake the North, though without Moat Cailin the ironborn would be a far lesser threat. They no longer held Winterfell, just stretches of the western shore. It was too much. For the ironborn to hold a single pebble of Northern land would be too much, after Winterfell. It was the Boltons and Freys Robb had to worry about now.

“My people have been searching for survivors,” Reed said. He was a small, slight man with greying hair and a very soft voice. “There are fewer and fewer to find. The Neck is treacherous for those who do not know its paths. Others, no doubt, have fled successfully or been taken prisoner.”

“With respect, your grace, that is not even the worst news,” Lord Glover said. “There have been rumours, even amongst our own men, that you are dead. Many men saw you carried from the field wounded and unconscious.”

“I have sent messengers to Lord Manderly,” Reed said. "We have been in contact of late, but even so the news will take time to reach him. His son Ser Wendel is sore wounded too, and may not recover."

“That is ill news, but thank you,” Robb said. Lord Manderly’s support was of the utmost importance now. Even with the full support of White Harbor, which might not be forthcoming with Ser Wylis still a Lannister hostage, it would be weeks and moons before they could move on the traitorous Boltons – and in the meantime, who knew how much of the Riverlands might fall to the Lannisters?

And he would not be able to fight. He would barely be able to walk. He did not dare tell his bannermen yet the full extent of his infirmity. Nothing was certain until his knee had healed. He might recover better than the maester thought.

There was only a little more news as of yet, and none of it good. The Greatjon was dead, killed under the walls of Moat Cailin. The Smalljon had taken his place as commander of the Umber forces. Dacey Mormont, too, had died in the battle. “With honour, defending her king,” her mother said with a fierce expression on her face and grief in her voice.

It was Howland Reed who gave him the other bad news. “Your direwolf was slain as well,” the small man said. “I am told it killed several Frey men before its injuries claimed it. As best my scouts can tell, the Freys obtained its corpse and are claiming it as proof of your death, your grace.”

_That_ was what was missing. The knowledge hit him like an arrow to the shoulder. He had such strange dreams, almost since he marched south from Winterfell. He had not had any strange dreams since the battle. It was foolish – he was not a wolf. He should not dream as a wolf. There must have been whispers. _Warg_ , men would say, if they knew.

It was possibly for the best. Grey Wind had been vicious of late. Still the feeling of absence was strong, so strong. Grey Wind had deserved better.  _The King Who Lost The North. Now I am the Young Wolf, without a wolf._

He set it aside as best he could. _Now Jeyne need never fear_ , Robb told himself, and pretended that it helped.

He had friends and bannermen to mourn, an army to regather, and an injury to heal from. He had to prove he yet lived, and he had to reclaim his kingdom. He had promised his mother and his sister he would see them again in Winterfell. It would not end here. Not while he lived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone!


	5. Sansa I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence and for Littlefinger's creeping. That guy is disgusting. Also, yes, this chapter takes place before the previous chapter.

Her lord husband’s words haunted her. _Bad news about Robb. Clemency for Mother, if I beg again._  

What good would her words do, Sansa thought bitterly, if Joffrey decided to kill her mother? He had decided to kill her father and her father had died. The queen hadn’t been able to stop him, nor the High Septon. 

She prayed for hours to the Seven – to the Warrior for Robb, the Mother for her mother, the Maid for her own sake. Then she prayed for the Father to protect them, the Smith to lend them strength, and the Crone to give them wisdom. She even prayed to the Stranger not to take them. Sansa heard the whispers about her becoming a septa out of distaste for her husband. She didn’t care.

And when she was done in the sept she went to the godswood to ask the Old Gods for the same. They were her father’s gods and her brothers’ gods, and in a way, they were hers now as well. They hid her from prying eyes and curious ears as she planned her escape.

“War is hard, my Jonquil,” Ser Dontos said when Sansa told him what Tyrion had said to her. “The Stranger can come at any time.”

“But if something happens,” Sansa asked, “how will you take me home?” Home was her mother and Robb. She would never believe herself fully safe again, not after that day at the Great Sept, not behind the walls of Winterfell where her brothers were murdered. But her mother and Robb were as close to safety as she could get. 

“Patience,” Ser Dontos said. “We’ll see you home, never fear.” 

Sansa could not help but fear. _Bad news._ The only good news was that she hadn’t heard anything yet. If there had been news, Joffrey would surely have summoned her to gloat. He’d announce it in front of the whole court, just to see her weep.

Weeks passed after that conversation with Tyrion, and no news came. There were no tales of Lannister victory or even Lannister defeat. The day of the wedding dawned and still nothing. Sansa allowed herself to hope a bit more, as she took her darkest, warmest dress and sturdiest shoes out to the godswood to hide them. _Home. Mother. Robb. Tonight._ It was finally happening. 

On the surface, the ceremony was everything that her own wedding hadn’t been. Margaery was so beautiful, dressed in Tyrell colours, though she had already been wed to Lord Renly. She looked so happy. But Sansa knew better. Margaery knew what Joffrey was like; how could she smile so?

The king looked the part, too, and Sansa hated the sight of him. She hated the sight of Tyrion as well, and she hated sharing a bed with him, but he at least tried to be kind. Joffrey hadn’t. Joffrey wasn’t.

Tyrion fidgeted all through the wedding. He didn’t have much patience for this sort of thing. More than that, Sansa knew the signs by now. Her lord husband was both half-drunk and exhausted. Either could make him talkative. He had so many questions for her today, about Bran (why did he want to know about Bran, of all people? Could he not just leave her brothers to their graves?), and afterwards about the ceremony, and then he started talking about Casterly Rock.

Casterly Rock was one of the last places she ever wanted to go to. She had seen a drawing of it once, rising forbiddingly above the sea. Even in the illustration, Sansa had thought it looked like it would be damp and unpleasant. And it was the Lannister castle. If she went there she’d be trapped forever in that cold mountain.

The Red Keep, Casterly Rock, they were prisons, Lannister-gilded cages, and tonight she was escaping.

“I shall go wherever my lord husband wishes,” she said, and didn’t even try to sound enthusiastic. 

Her answer did not please him. _Good._ It was small and petty, but truly, she did not know what he wanted from her. If it was her heart, she wasn’t going to give it to him. He was a Lannister, and Sansa had learned better than to love Lannisters.

Tyrion started speaking of Braavos instead.

_The only place I wish to go is to my mother and Robb. Tonight I will go home. I will._

Sansa had thought carefully about what to wear to this reception beforehand. The magic hairnet, that was a given. Fortunately, it went well with her hair. A gown of the same colour as the stones would be too overpowering, so she’d have to match the hairnet with the lining of her gown instead.

The gown itself would be grey, she decided. Not plain grey, that wouldn’t be appropriate, but silvery grey, to go with the wire of the hairnet. Satin. Trimmed with grey-white vair. Neither colour would clash with her hair or the purple of the hairnet and lining.

And there were more important things about wearing silvery grey and white.

The Lannisters could make her take a bride-cloak and make her say marriage vows, but they wouldn’t make her one of them. It was as much defiance as she dared, and when she got back to her mother and Robb, she would tell them that she wore Stark colours to Joffrey’s wedding. It would make Robb laugh and Mother smile.

If her lord husband noticed, he didn’t make an issue of it. Then again, he had said that Joffrey had earned himself a dagger. He hated Joffrey as much as she did.

She and Tyrion went down to the courtyard for the pre-reception gathering, and this at least she knew how to do. Her joy at finally leaving, very soon now, made it easier to smile and say all her pretty words.

It was very kind of Lady Olenna to say such nice things about her dress, but Sansa could not suppress the spike of fear as the older woman tugged at her hairnet. _No, no, leave that alone, please. I need it._ She dared not check it for damage afterwards, either. There were so many eyes on her and Tyrion, and her husband scowled around at the throne room, as if daring people to laugh or even comment.

Once they were seated, safely away from Joffrey, and the first course served, she dared to touch the hairnet. It didn’t feel as though any damage had been done.

She still did not know how a hairnet would help her escape, but it was her chance. Her only chance. Casterly Rock was no escape; Braavos with Tyrion would be near as bad. The Narrow Sea was narrow, it was true, but it was still a sea that required a ship to cross. Highgarden was the next best, as Lady Olenna had said she might visit, but it was her family that she wanted.

Dishes and singers followed each other in quick succession, but Sansa could neither taste the food nor hear the music. Tyrion said something to her and she hardly noticed. It was all like a dream, maybe the best dream she’d had since that day at the Great Sept.

_Only a few more hours at most. Any minute now. I’ll be going home._

She came back down to reality as Galyeon of Cuy began to sing of the Blackwater. Tyrion was truly drunk now, and threatening to hang all the singers. Ser Garlan said something about what Tyrion had done at the Blackwater, but Sansa didn’t know the truth of it.

“From the walls of the Keep one brave woman did see the Blackwater Rush burning green,” Galyeon sang. “And swearing there then that the Keep would not fall, stood the valiant golden queen.”

“She never did that,” Sansa said, startled. The queen had not ventured outside all the battle. The queen hadn’t even stayed sober.

“Never believe anything you hear in a song, my lady,” her husband said sourly, and had both their cups refilled with wine.

The wine helped her drift off again, but she had to be careful not to drink too much. _Soon_ , she told herself, as another rendition of ‘The Rains of Castamere’ started up. _Please, soon._ But the night wore on – some dwarf jousters rode out and Sansa only noticed in a far-distant way – and still nothing happened except for her lord husband losing his temper.

Joffrey came over and poured wine all over Tyrion then. Some of it splashed on her gown. The king was drunk, too, Sansa realised, and stayed still and silent in her chair. She couldn’t let Joffrey ruin this for her now. She could not attract his attention.

It took Ser Garlan, Queen Margaery, and Lord Tywin together to calm the king. Sansa breathed out as the pie was wheeled in. The only injury her husband had suffered was to his pride, and she had not been forced to leave before whatever distraction her friend had planned began. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Tyrion’s fury.

Then Joffrey called for Ser Ilyn to cut the wedding pie. Joffrey would have Ser Ilyn use her father’s sword, the sword of her house, to cut the wedding pie. The indignity could have made Sansa cry, before, but instead she watched calmly as Ser Ilyn brought forth a long, bright length of steel –

\- bright?

That was not her father’s sword. “What sword is that?” she asked Tyrion, afraid now. She even took his arm. “What has Ser Ilyn done with my father’s sword?”

Tyrion’s eyes widened as he too saw that Ser Ilyn did not hold Ice, and then winced a bit as more wine dripped in his eyes. He said nothing, however, only glanced at his father.

So it was Lord Tywin then. The Lannisters killed her father, wed her to Tyrion, and took her father’s sword. They melted it down and gave it to Joffrey, like they tried to make her a Lannister too. 

She would have to tell Robb what had happened to Ice.

Joffrey and Margaery brought the sword down on the pie, releasing dozens of doves. Feathers drifted down around the royal couple as more music started. A piece of pie was placed in front of her but she couldn’t eat.

Her father’s sword. Her father. Herself. _Bad news._ The Lannisters were going to destroy everything that was Stark.

“You’re deathly pale, my lady,” Tyrion said, in much the same tone of concern he’d used to hint to her what might happen to her mother and brother. “You need a breath of fresh air, and I need a fresh doublet.” He stood – a move that made him shorter still – and offered her his hand.

_Yes, I need to leave now_ warred with _no, no, I need to escape for true_.

But Joffrey ruined that for her too. There was going to be a scene, Sansa just knew it. “Serve me my wine,” Joffrey said to Tyrion, and not even Margaery could talk him down. Tyrion poured.

Joffrey started to choke. And he did not stop.

His face was starting to turn the colour of the amethysts in her hairnet, and while every eye was on the dying young king, Sansa ran.

She was not the only one fleeing the hall. That was good, good. Nobody would notice her in the confusion. There were tears in her eyes. Why? She loathed Joffrey. He deserved a knife. Deserved it. Didn’t he? There was laughter in her throat as well.

Nothing felt real. Joffrey was dead, and she was going home. She held on to those two things as Ser Dontos led her to a cliff, and then rowed her to the middle of the Blackwater Rush. The bells rung the whole time, and neither they nor the cool night air could wake her. Not even the word that Tyrion had been arrested. He hadn’t done it, had he? Just this morning he had been saying…

Only when Petyr Baelish gave her a hand into the ship did she start recovering her wits. “You’re in the Vale,” she said aloud.

“Clearly not,” Littlefinger said. “All is well, my lady, you’re safe now. The worst is past.” 

“Lord Petyr,” Ser Dontos called up from the boat, “I must go. I will soon be missed.”

“Certainly,” Littlefinger said. “But first there is the matter of payment.” He looked at Lothor Brune, who dipped his torch, and suddenly there were three crossbow bolts in Ser Dontos.

Sansa did not scream – she did not have the time – but she did throw up over the side of the ship. She was going home now, and Joffrey was dead. Why did she feel so uneasy? 

“Truly, the worst is behind you,” Litttlefinger repeated, once again offering her a hand. “Do not waste your tears, Lady Sansa, Ser Dontos’ death will save you from Queen Cersei and the eunuch alike. You must realise that now you are gone, you will be suspect in Joffrey’s murder just as much as your husband.” 

Sansa hadn’t realised. She shivered. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I just want to go home. You will take me to my mother? To Robb?” 

“Your mother,” Littlefinger said wistfully. “Yes. That may not be immediately possible, my lady. Last I heard, she was safe and well, but your brother hid her away to protect her. I will do the same for you, Lady Sansa, until I can reunite you with her.”

She had so many questions, but she was so weary. She just asked one more question, the most pressing one. “Why do all this, Lord Petyr? Why are you helping me?”

That wistful smile did not leave his face. “Your mother is very special to me, as once I was to her. When I was young, I hoped to win her hand, but your uncle Brandon put an end to that. Still, in a better world, you might have been mine. How could I ever turn my back on you – on either of you?” 

He took her to a small cabin under the deck, and pointed out a chest full of clothing, and told her to sleep and rest and not let the day’s events trouble her. At the door, he turned back for a moment. “You really do look like her, Sansa,” he said. “The very image.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know that drew significantly off the actual chapters, but I felt I had to get the difference in mindset sorted. Sorry if I tried anyone's patience there, thanks for reading!


	6. Catelyn II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings this time. (Probably because this chapter contains none of Littlefinger, Joffrey, Ramsay, or Tywin, all characters that seem to need permanent warnings.)

They made good time as they travelled from the Twins. The Mallister lands were reasonably untouched by the war, having been reached by neither the westermen nor the ironmen. The smallfolk here might have a hard winter, but they probably would not starve.

Arya clearly did not believe that she wouldn’t starve, that she would be warm and fed. When eating, she never took her eyes off her meal, as though afraid someone would snatch it from her. Nor could she be long parted from her blanket or her warm clothing. Catelyn suspected that she had been right to do so.

She had wrested some few details of Arya’s stay in Harrenhal from her younger daughter. None of them had been pleasant. Roose Bolton was a reliable commander, but his results were achieved through fear. Small wonder her daughter, lost and almost alone (she had mentioned a pair of boys who had helped her), had chanced the Riverlands rather than risking that Bolton did not believe her claim to be Arya Stark.

Arya was not quite ten. Catelyn had made it to seventeen before she learned something of the harshness of the world; five and thirty before she knew true grief, true fear.

It even worried her that she herself was one of the objects Arya was loath to long leave out of her sight. At Winterfell, Arya had forever been running off. Now she rode close by Catelyn, eager to speak of trivial things like the trees they passed or the gossip she overheard from the guardsmen, but silent on what she had seen and done before they met at the Twins.

“Is that Seagard?” Arya asked, one clear afternoon. It had been a good day’s riding in air that increasingly smelled of the sea. Save for that, and with the autumn chill in the air, she could almost have been enjoying a ride near Winterfell with her daughter, in the times before everything had gone so wrong.

Catelyn followed Arya’s gaze to the horizon, where a tower could be seen. “Yes,” Catelyn said, recognising it instantly. As a girl, she had visited it several times. “That’s Seagard.” Soon they would all be able to have a good meal and a wash. In the longer term, they would be able to settle. Arya would have a roof over her head, a bed to sleep safely in, and food every day. Soon Catelyn might even ask Lord Jason about a septa to resume Arya's education.

The Booming Tower rose higher than any other tower in all of the Riverlands except Harrenhal’s, affording an excellent view over Ironman’s Bay. Thick and boxy, it wasn’t an elegant tower, perfectly matching Seagard, which was not an elegant castle. Catelyn, however, was coming to appreciate the beauty of high, sturdy walls and impeccably maintained fortifications, especially when they were between her children and the people who would hurt them. Ned had once passed on something he’d heard from Robert - Seagard had reminded his friend of Storm’s End, he’d said (soon after Arya's birth, in fact, as Ned told her about what he'd done during the Greyjoy Rebellion). Catelyn could only hope that this castle would be as safe as the stronghold of the Baratheons, for Arya’s sake.

There was little fighting here at present, as Robb and Lord Jason had predicted. The ironmen had been quiet, Balon Greyjoy’s death sending all the warriors and captains of repute sailing back to the Iron Islands themselves to have their say choosing their new king.

_Theon Greyjoy told Robb that. Now he will use it to kill Theon’s people._

Once she had stood before her son’s bannermen and pled for peace. Back when she had five children to protect and only her husband to mourn. She could not bring herself to feel bad about the deaths of ironmen now.

“We will stay here for the rest of the war,” Catelyn said to Arya, once they had been given all the luxuries Seagard had to offer – rooms, baths, and assurance of a fine meal soon to come. “We will be safe here, I promise.”

For the first time since Catelyn had been reunited with her daughter, Arya’s eyes were not hard and suspicious. She nodded, and Catelyn was glad that Arya still trusted her that much, at least.

“Then we will go home,” Catelyn promised. “To Winterfell, where we all belong.” 

“Father said that,” Arya said.

A cold knife slid into Catelyn’s heart. “What?” 

“Father said we were going to leave. He said it wasn’t safe and that Sansa shouldn’t marry Joffrey and that we’d go back to Winterfell. He got us passage on a galley. We were going to leave the day the Lannisters arrested him.” 

Catelyn blinked, and blinked again, determined not to show Arya more tears than she already had. A favourable tide, a few hours, they might have spared her daughters months of pain. And her Ned had tried to save them. He would have done his best. He had been so close. Even if her daughters had been stopped at Dragonstone, Stannis Baratheon was no murderer of children. If they had got so far as White Harbor, better still.

“Well,” she said at last, “I promise you that Lord Jason is no Cersei Lannister. He will not be arresting either of us.” She did not mention that this arrangement was part of her penance for freeing Jaime Lannister. She did add, “Your brother is as fine a commander of men as your father was. He has not lost a battle yet, not even against Tywin Lannister himself.”

If the gods were good, he would not start losing now. She prayed it twice as hard because her words made Arya smile. It was a tentative thing, but it was a smile.

Life at Seagard was strange. All her life she had had responsibilities. Her father was dead and buried in the Red Fork, without need for her care. Robb no longer wanted her advice more than he wanted her far from open war. Seagard was not her home, and she was not its lady; she could not fill her days arranging the affairs of the household.

Only one responsibility remained to her: Arya.

And Arya was desperately unhappy. Catelyn could see it.

After a week at Seagard, Arya finally allowed Catelyn out of her sight, but never for longer than a morning or an afternoon. She did not complain when Catelyn asked her to wear a dress (Catelyn allowed her to wear leathers more often than not), nor when Lord Jason insisted she take a substantial escort for even the shortest ride outside Seagard’s walls. She even let Catelyn deal with what remained of her hair.

“I thought you’d hate it,” Arya confessed. 

Standing behind her with a well-sharpened razor, Catelyn couldn’t see her face. “I do hate it,” Catelyn said. “I can see the scabs under your hair.” Someone had drawn her daughter's blood just cutting her hair. There was disguise, and there was sheer carelessness.

“I like it short,” Arya said. “It doesn’t get in the way as much.” 

“It will be short no matter what, and it will be short for a long time yet.” Catelyn hadn’t even started cutting, instead taking her time to survey the damage. “No daughter of mine will wander around with her hair half hacked off. I’ll have to cut it all the way back to even it up.”

She would rather brush her daughter’s hair, dark and so unlike her own, but there was plenty of satisfaction in simply helping Arya look presentable once more. Still very boyish, even in a dress, but much less like a ragged urchin.

Catelyn spent far too long waiting. The new year approached, and with it, Robb’s planned attack on Moat Cailin.

_He will win_ , she told herself. _He will win, as he won before._

Ned had never been defeated in battle either, but it was not the battle that had defeated him. Still, she had to tell herself Robb would be safe and victorious, or else she could not reassure Arya. Arya, she thought, needed the reassurance more than even she did.

“Robb will be fighting on the morrow,” she told her daughter on the eve of the new year. “Will you come with me to the sept to pray for his success?” Even that Arya agreed to without complaint, though Catelyn knew her daughter cared little for any gods.

The sept at Seagard was as functional as the rest of the castle, immaculately maintained but little loved. Jason Mallister was a man who prayed only when prayer was appropriate – before and after battle, births, weddings, funerals.

She and Arya went straight to the icon of the Warrior. _Robb will win._ Over and over again she told herself. It was so much harder to fight down her anxiety when her days were empty.

“Aren’t you going to sing?” Arya asked, interrupting Catelyn’s silent prayers.

“Sing?” _Gentle Mother, font of mercy…_ “No. No, I don’t think so.” _Stay the swords and stay the arrows._  Robb had to fight, and he had to win. If her son, and the daughter not lost to her, were to have a future, Robb could not stay his sword, and Catelyn could not even pray otherwise.  _Let them know a better day._

“Oh.” 

Since Arya sounded disappointed, Catelyn sang her daughter a lullaby that night, as she used to do for Bran and Rickon. She had not done that for Arya for a very long time, longer than the year they’d been parted. She didn’t mind. She just wanted her daughter to be happy. She’d even settle for Arya being less unhappy.

When Arya finally dropped off into restless sleep, Catelyn stayed by her side. “It’s a new year,” she said. “I hope it is better to us both than the last.”

Come the dawn, Robb would be battling again.

The next morning she climbed the landward wall of Seagard to wait for news of Robb as she had once waited for her father. Back and forth she walked, searching the sky for any speck of black that might be a raven. It was too early to receive word, she knew – the battle was likely not even done yet – but Catelyn could not help herself.

_Ned never made me wait like this. When he made me wait, he made me wait with things to do to pass my time. A hearth to keep, a home to defend, lands to hold, children to raise._

She missed him so. She ached to return to her son, even if that meant taking Arya with her, to help him.

“There is no need, my lady,” Jason Mallister said at the evening meal. Around them, several of the servants still looked a bit the worse for wear from the previous evening’s celebrating. Would that the ironmen had been the same in the morning. “When word arrives, I will bring it to you myself. Directly.”

“I thank you, my lord, but I have little enough to do here. Watching for news at least occupies my time.” She tried to smile.

Still no word had come by the next evening, and then Catelyn started to worry even more. “You’re scared for him,” Arya said bluntly. 

“Of course I’m scared for him,” Catelyn said. If Arya could see it, there was little point denying it. There was only shame in being afraid if she let it control her. “He is my son and your last brother. I’ve been scared every time I heard he went into battle. It is not a reflection of his skill, Arya. Robb is no fool. His scouts and outriders are good and his bodyguard is capable. There is always risk, but he does his best to keep himself safe.”

“Fear cuts deeper than swords,” Arya said. It didn’t have the sound of her daughter’s own words. It _did_ have the sound of something she’d told herself many times before.

“I suppose it might, at that,” Catelyn replied. “This particular cut is just part of being a mother. I’ve lived with it for a long time.”

On the third day, there was nothing, nor on the fourth. Arya came to wait with her sometimes. On the evening of the fifth day, Catelyn had given up for the night when a servant was dispatched to bring her to Lord Jason’s solar.

As soon as she saw Jason Mallister’s face, she knew the news was bad. There was a goblet of wine already poured and set in front of the empty chair, and she knew the news was _truly_ bad. “What has happened to my son?” she asked.

“Please sit, Lady Catelyn,” Lord Jason said. “I would not tell you while you were still on your feet.”

Catelyn sat.

“I have the first reports from the survivors,” Lord Jason said. “The Freys and the Boltons turned their cloaks at the battle.”

“They had the rearguard,” Catelyn said, heart in her throat. Robb’s forces would have been taken unaware, flanked, and then crushed between those traitors and Moat Cailin itself. “Did – did his grace survive?”

Jason Mallister shook his head.

Catelyn felt as though her strings had been cut, like her bones had turned to water. She couldn’t have stood if she tried. _Robb._ Her first son, and her last son too. All dead now, along with their father.

She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes and dripping down her face.

“I can tell Princess Arya the news if you like, my lady,” Lord Jason said. 

The words gave some strength to her limbs, though they could not stop her tears. Catelyn felt as though nothing would ever stop her tears. _No, no, no, no. Not Robb, not Robb, the gods cannot be so cruel._ “No,” she said. When her voice came out almost too faint to be heard, she repeated it. “No. I will tell my daughter myself. Will you have her brought to my room, my lord? You have other things you must do.”

She had to be strong for Arya. Neither of them had anyone else left, and for all Arya had been through, she was still only a child. When she was next alone she might scream her grief to the gods, but for now, she had to put her daughter first. Especially as they would likely be under siege soon.

Catelyn was not going to let Tywin Lannister dictate her last daughter’s fate.

Arya would probably be in the yard, watching Lord Jason’s men train. It would take only a short time to fetch her. Catelyn might have objected to her daughter spending so much time with soldiers, once, but these days, she couldn’t bring herself to.

Her shoes felt full of lead as she made her way to her room. Nor did she know what to do with her hands. How was she going to say this? Arya had been through so much already.

When she arrived, Arya took one look at Catelyn and said, “Robb’s dead, isn’t he?” 

Catelyn held out her hands for Arya to take. “Yes, my sweet. Yes, your brother is dead.”

Unlike Catelyn, Arya never shed a tear.


	7. The Dutiful Wife

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, this chapter was really easy to write, so enjoy your speedy update. Content note here: parental abuse in the form of forcing birth control on someone (without their knowledge).

There was blood on Jeyne’s smallclothes and thighs again. She had felt the dull ache below her stomach the night before and suspected. No Eddard for her, no Brandon.

Robb would be so disappointed when she wrote him next. They had tried so often. Now they wouldn’t have another opportunity for _months_. Maybe more than a year. Maybe never.

“There’s nothing else for it. I’ll name Jon my heir,” he’d said, the last time she’d bled. He’d mentioned Jon Snow to her, when he’d first told her about his family, but hadn’t said much beyond that he’d be devastated that Bran and Rickon had died, and even more so that their sister Arya had gone missing. Jeyne hadn’t been able to tell whether he was upset she was not with child or pleased to legitimise his bastard brother. “Mother won’t like it, but hells with what Mother thinks of Jon.”

Jeyne’s mother wouldn’t like it either, when she heard. Even Jeyne herself was uneasy about naming a bastard to such a high position. She was sure Jon Snow was a good man, and Robb did love him dearly, but still, he _was_ a bastard. Jeyne didn’t know much about bastards. Everyone said they were treacherous, though. What about her children, hers and Robb’s, when she finally bore them? 

It was Robb’s decision. He was her lord husband and her king as well. It wasn’t her place to argue with him. If he wished to name Jon Snow as his heir until she bore Robb a child, that was his decision to make. 

She tried to imagine what Jon Snow looked like. No matter how she tried she could only think of a version of Robb with dark hair and grey eyes, even though she knew Robb strongly resembled his lady mother. 

And thinking of Robb’s lady mother, she had to admit to herself that she was glad Lady Catelyn, at least, was no longer at Riverrun. She felt awful about displacing Lady Catelyn from her childhood home, but Jeyne found Robb’s mother so very intimidating. For all the older woman’s courtesy she had been neither warm nor welcoming, and she clearly didn’t think Jeyne was good enough for her son.

That was understandable, since Jeyne didn’t think she was good enough for Lady Catelyn’s son either. _I couldn’t even give Robb an heir in time_ , she thought as she cleaned herself up. _The most important thing I had to do._  It was just hard to see someone else look at her like she'd failed.

Jeyne was broken out of her thoughts by a knock at the door. “Jeyne?” her mother asked. “Jeyne, are you dressed?”

“Not quite, Mother,” she said, and hurriedly put on a robe before letting her in.

“It’s time for your posset,” her mother said. She brought it herself every morning without fail. “Just in case. We’ll know soon enough if it’s worked.”

“It hasn’t, Mother,” Jeyne said. “My moonblood has come.” 

Her mother set the tankard of ale and milk down. “Oh. Oh, Jeyne. I am sorry.” 

Jeyne could feel tears prickling at the corners of her eyes from the sheer disappointment. She’d failed her husband and she’d failed her mother. Lady Sybell had been more supportive of her match with Robb than Jeyne had expected, especially considering what had happened before the wedding. How frightened she had been to confess. “It’s all right, Mother, I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will, Jeyne,” her mother said. “I suppose there’s no point in this now.”

Jeyne laughed a little, or she tried to. Robb had once told her that she must always put on a brave face for others, that that was part of being Queen. “I’ll be glad to be rid of the taste, at least. It was a truly awful brew.” 

“But necessary,” Lady Sybell said. 

A Queen had to bear children for her King. Jeyne took a deep breath. No Eddard yet, no Brandon. Not even a daughter. She glanced across the room at the thin copper-and-iron crown Robb had had made for her, to match his own, and tried to find her courage. “Robb and I will have other chances,” she said. “I _will_ bear him sons.”

Once he returned to her, if he survived. Though if he were victorious she supposed she would be the one returning to him, in Winterfell.

They had only wed because of what had happened in Winterfell. Sometimes she wondered if Robb thought it was a fair trade. When the lord all called the Greatjon brought the news of his brothers, Robb had taken it with a cold face. When the Greatjon left, Robb had wept, and she had sat down beside him. Then he had wept on her shoulder, the closest she had been to a man not her brother before, and she had tried to soothe him. It was not right for a man to weep so. She had been frightened, and she had wanted to help as well.

Before she knew it they were kissing. The kissing had led to other things. He had needed her that night as Jeyne didn’t think he’d needed her since. 

In the morning he had been ashamed. They had both been ashamed, but he had been braver than her. He had lost his brothers and his family’s home; she could only think of how angry her father would be that she had lain with a man, and how her mother would be angrier still. Robb had proposed the match and then wed her that very afternoon. For all they were now man and wife, King and Queen, Jeyne thought sometimes that Robb was ashamed still. She knew he had been betrothed to a daughter of House Frey and it bothered him to have broken that oath. 

_I will be as good a wife to him as any woman could be._ Jeyne had promised herself that. _And as good a Queen._

Queens had demands on their time, though Jeyne knew very little of them. She had never felt welcome in Robb’s councils, and her lord husband had thus far done his best to spare her from the bloodiest news. She had no head for wars or schemes or plots. Instead, she had thrown herself into trying to make his life easier. She had ordered his meals and his clothing, she had always been ready with a smile, sometimes she had played the harp for him as he looked at his maps. She had stood by him at his lord grandfather’s funeral, too, when he had needed her arm. Even when he had worried her so after Lord Karstark’s execution, so that she begged Lady Catelyn’s help, she had done her best to make him smile. It had worked even after he had learned that Winterfell was burned.

Now he was not here, and she was left to pay the proper courtesies to his bannermen on her own. She did not know how to be a Queen. She had begged Robb to take her with him, to his uncle’s wedding at least, but he would not allow it.

“Is there anything I must do today?” Jeyne asked her mother. Lady Sybell always knew of this sort of matter.

“Lord Tully and his new bride are due to arrive back,” her mother reminded her. “You must be there to greet them.” 

“When will they be here?” she asked.

“Before the evening meal,” her mother said. “A modest feast has been arranged to celebrate the arrival of the new Lady Tully to Riverrun.”

The new Lady Tully was the woman Jeyne had inadvertently replaced when she wed Robb. She hoped the former Frey woman would not bear a grudge, whoever she was. Her late arrival, along with Robb’s lord uncle, gave Jeyne most of the day to prepare. It was not a meeting she was looking forward to.

First, though, she went to Robb’s great-uncle Ser Brynden. She did not dare to go very often, since he was usually busy, and he treated her much as his niece the Lady Catelyn did. “I always have time for you, your grace,” he said when she inquired this time, but his eyes were cool.

“Has there been news of his grace?” she asked. 

“None,” Ser Brynden said. “Nor is there likely to be for some time. Armies do not move all that quickly, your grace, and Moat Cailin is a tough nut to crack.” 

Disappointed, she thanked him for his honest response and the time he took to reassure her. She spent most of the rest of the day asking Riverrun’s Septon about the North, and finally went to bathe dress appropriately for Lord and Lady Tully. It seemed that no sooner had she finished dressing than a servant gave her notice of their arrival.

Jeyne was Queen. If she did not want to go, she did not have to go. It would be horribly discourteous of her, however, and she had sworn to herself that she would do her best to be a _good_ Queen. So she put on a smile as well and made her way to Riverrun’s doors.

There were many more men riding back than she had expected, most of them wearing the towers of House Frey. Lord Edmure rode in front of them all with his lady wife. Robb had been so angry with his uncle earlier, and Lord Edmure, it had to be said, was rather sullen (Jeyne hesitated to say it even to Robb; it sounded so disrespectful), but she was pleased to see Lord Tully was smiling now. It made it easier for her to smile back as Lady Tully was introduced.

Roslin Frey Tully was pretty, too. Her hair was much the same colour as Jeyne’s, but she was shorter, fairer of skin, and more slender. Robb might have liked her too. It was Jeyne’s good fortune – and, she had to remember, her lord husband’s _ill_ fortune. They would never have wed had his brothers not been murdered.

“Welcome to Riverrun, Lady Tully,” Jeyne said. “I hope that in time you can come to love it here, as I have come to do so.” She did love Riverrun. It wasn’t home like the Crag was, but it was far grander and more comfortable.

Roslin Tully curtsied. Jeyne still wasn’t used to that. “I’m sure I will, your grace,” the other woman said.

“We must go for a walk in the godswood together soon,” Jeyne said. She was on good terms with her sister and her mother was so helpful; still, she missed having friends. Lady Roslin was close to her own age. Hopefully they could become close over the duration of this war. “Once you are settled in.”

Lady Roslin glanced at Lord Edmure, who nodded. “I should like that, your grace,” she said. 

Behind Lady Roslin, several of the Freys were openly glaring. Jeyne felt their eyes on her and tried to ignore them. Of course they would be unhappy; their sister might have been Queen. It wasn’t as though she wished she had never wed Robb, it was just that she wished wedding him hadn’t caused so much trouble.

“It must be nice to have so many of your brothers here,” Jeyne said to Roslin instead. Most of them would be half-brothers, if Jeyne recalled what little Robb had told her about Lord Frey was correct.

“Oh, yes, my lord father insisted,” Roslin said with a smile. “I’m very grateful to him.” Her voice sounded a bit strained at that, and Jeyne didn’t know how to put her at her ease.

Lady Sybell rescued her shortly afterwards, after Lady Roslin and Lord Edmure continued to speak to the others gathered here. “Her grace needs rest,” her mother said, interposing herself between Jeyne and the Freys still glaring at her. “If you will excuse us.”

They were excused, of course, since Jeyne was Queen. The deference still made her blush a little. “Thank you, mother,” Jeyne said once they were safely away. 

“I don’t like the look of them,” Lady Sybell sniffed. “Brutes, all. You should stay away from these Freys, Jeyne. All those Rivers too.” 

She didn’t need her mother’s permission to do that. Jeyne truly got the sense that they hated her. Robb had cautioned her of them as well. “I will, mother.”

A few days later, she did get the chance to spend time with Lady Roslin. “I suppose some people might find this awkward,” Jeyne noted as they walked through Riverrun’s beautiful godswood. It was less beautiful now that the leaves were falling, but still a pleasant place to walk despite the chill in the air.

“Oh, I don’t hold a grudge, your grace,” Roslin assured her. The look on her face was so earnest Jeyne couldn’t help but believe. “Truly I don’t. Lord Edmure –“

Roslin blushed deeply. Jeyne was still prone to blushing like that when she thought of Robb and the reasons she enjoyed their marriage. “You are happy with Lord Edmure?” Jeyne said. 

Roslin nodded.

“I’m happy for you both,” Jeyne said. “I didn’t want to cause discord between our houses. Let’s speak no more of it. You and I shall be friends, as my lord husband and your father will have already made up their differences.”

After that, Jeyne was sure to spend at least a little time with Lady Roslin each day. She liked the other woman, and they had much in common. They had both wed well above where they had expected to, they were both quietly daunted by Riverrun’s wealth, and they shared an interest in music.

What the passing of time did not bring her was news of Robb. Once again she sought out Ser Brynden, once the new year had been and gone. 

She found him in Lord Edmure’s solar, poring over maps. He stood politely when she entered the room, but as always she felt he did not like her very much. “Is there still no word?” she asked him.

“No, your grace,” he said.

“Is that…bad? It has been a long time…”

Ser Brynden did not answer immediately. He looked out the window, at the sun shining on the river, and the clear blue sky. There were no ravens there. “Yes, your grace. It is cause for worry indeed.”


	8. Arya II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, uh…that was a wait…sorry...

When her mother told her Robb was dead, Arya just felt cold inside. _Robb dead._

“You said he always won,” she said.

“He always had,” her mother replied. “Until now.”

Her mother was crying again. Arya hated it. Arya couldn’t stop it. And she couldn’t kill whoever had killed Robb. “What happened?” How could he lose? When he promised her he wouldn’t?

“He was betrayed,” Lady Catelyn said. “The Freys and the Boltons turned on him in the middle of the battle.”

_Cowards!_ Her grip tightened on her mother’s hands, but her mother didn’t flinch. If anything, she gripped back just as hard. _He’d said he’d survive. He_ promised! 

She didn’t know what to say. “He promised,” she said at last. “He said we’d meet again at Winterfell.”

“And so we will,” her mother told her. She’d stopped weeping, and her eyes had instead grown hard. There were still tears on her face, though. “In the crypts. We will see Robb buried properly, next to your father, as he deserves.”

That brought up another question. “Does this mean that Sansa gets Winterfell?” Mother had said Sansa was married now. To a _Lannister_. The Imp. 

The question made her mother look angry. _Really_ angry. She’d always feared that look on her mother’s face back at Winterfell. “Robb disinherited your sister. He did not want Winterfell falling into Lannister hands.”

“So…does that mean… _I_ get Winterfell?” Arya didn’t know that she wanted it. Not if it meant that Robb was dead. She’d trade it for her brother in an instant.

“No,” Lady Catelyn said. “Robb left a will, my sweet, and you were not in it either.” Her face softened slightly, just for an instant, before going stony with anger again. “We thought you were dead.”

That left… “Jon,” Arya said. “Robb left Winterfell to Jon?” 

“Yes,” her mother said reluctantly.

_Jon will be pleased_ , Arya thought. Not pleased that Robb was dead, no more than he’d like that Father and Bran and Rickon were all dead, and probably not happy that Robb had skipped over her and Sansa either. Just pleased that Robb had included him. “But he’s in the Night’s Watch.”

From the look on her mother’s face, Lady Catelyn clearly thought Jon should stay there, too. “Your brother thought to trade the Lord Commander for him,” she said. “A hundred men, if necessary, though gods know where we can spare them from now.”

“He’ll be King then,” Arya said. She knew it would upset her mother a lot, but it was Jon they were talking about. Arya didn’t mind. He’d be as good a king as Robb had been. Besides, Arya didn’t want to be a princess; she didn’t want to be a queen. She changed the topic quickly. “What are we going to do?”

“We are going to leave this place,” her mother said. “The Lannisters and their curs will have it under siege soon, and I will not let them have you. I will not let them marry you off like they did your sister.”

Arya wished she could believe that. She believed that her mother would try, anyway. If the Lannisters caught them it wouldn’t matter what either of them wanted. “Where are we going to go?” she asked. Winterfell was gone. “The Wall?” _Jon._

Lady Catelyn pursed her lips. “White Harbor. We will need the Manderlys if we are to fight back against the Boltons and Freys. If we have to go further, Braavos.” She sighed. “The Neck is closed to us, and we cannot take ship here. We must go back through the Riverlands, and we must do it quickly.” She looked Arya in the eye. “It will be a long and dangerous trip, and I would not subject you to it had I thought we another choice.”

Back through the Riverlands. Arya didn’t want to go back out there. All that time she spent trying to get back to Mother and Robb and now – and now – she didn’t want to go, even if she didn’t like Seagard much either. “I can do it,” Arya said.

Lady Catelyn smiled. It was a thin and tired expression, and Arya knew she wasn’t _really_ happy. How could she be? Robb was dead. “You are brave,” she said. “Your father would be proud of you.”

No, he wouldn’t. Neither would her mother, if she knew. She wouldn’t even tell _Jon_ about killing those people. Even he might hate her if he found out.

“We will leave in the morning,” Lady Catelyn said. “First light again. Get some sleep, if you can.”

Arya didn't move. She didn’t want to be alone right now. Her mother didn’t tell her to leave, just asked a servant for another blanket and wrapped it firmly around Arya’s shoulders, and at some point Arya dozed off.

She woke to her mother gently shaking her shoulder. “Arya. Arya, it’s time to go.”

For just a second she couldn’t remember where they were going or why before it all came crashing back. _Robb’s dead._

Arya had given up on crying over that sort of thing. It hurt, it hurt so badly she had to pretend it didn’t hurt at all, and it didn’t seem to reach her face anymore. Crying didn’t change anything. Robb was dead like her father and she only had her mother left.

Lady Catelyn looked sick, though, old and worn with red-rimmed eyes. There was some white in her hair now, Arya realised, just a little at her temples. Arya didn’t know if she had slept, but she doubted it. For all that, her mother didn’t look weak. She looked determined. “Hurry now,” she said. “Dress warm.”

Arya changed as fast as she could. Boy’s clothing again, since it was harder to ride in a dress. Besides, Mother had said she could wear boy’s clothing on the road.

It was still mostly dark outside, but that didn’t bother her. She made her way down to the courtyard to find a dozen guardsmen waiting, none wearing house colours. A dozen guardsmen wouldn’t be enough to protect them from the Lannisters. It might not even stop bandits. “Princess,” one greeted her. Arya scowled. 

“Mount up,” Arya’s mother said from behind her. Lady Catelyn was in a plain riding dress, the plainest Arya had ever seen her wear, and she’d tied back and covered her hair. Because it stood out too much, Arya thought. She didn’t know many people who had hair like her mother or her siblings. “It’s past time we were gone." Arya had been given a good horse, a mare a bit larger than she was used to riding. She hoped she could keep her in hand.

Lord Mallister was there to see them off, and he was dressed well even though the sun wasn’t all the way up yet. “Farewell, Princess,” he said to Arya.

She didn’t like hearing that from Lord Mallister either. She didn’t want to be a princess. Being king only got Robb killed, and being princes got Bran and Rickon killed, and being Hand got her father killed. Everything was better when they were all Starks of Winterfell. Except Jon, but he was as good as a Stark anyway. If he were king now, he’d _actually_ be a Stark. _King Jon._ She wished she could laugh about that. It wasn't funny now.

To Lady Catelyn, Lord Mallister said, “Farewell, and ride safely.”

“I intend to,” Lady Catelyn said. “Thank you for your help, my lord.” 

“We are loyal to the King in the North,” Lord Mallister said. “I regret only that we cannot guarantee your safety, my lady.” 

“It’s not safety I seek,” Lady Catelyn said, though Arya could see her face set at the mention of the King in the North. “I will have blood for this. Justice for my son’s murder. One way or another, we will have justice.”

Lord Mallister nodded. “We will hold out here as long as we can, but the Lannisters will no doubt come in force.”

“Nobody could ask any more from you than that. Farewell, Lord Mallister. I hope that we will meet again.”

He inclined his head and stepped back. 

“Move out!” Lady Catelyn called, and their small group kicked their horses into a brisk trot, and then to a steady canter. Arya kept pace beside her mother, in the middle of the pack.

Lady Catelyn kept a gruelling pace up that day, and Arya barely spoke to her as they rode. She seemed lost in thought. Arya didn’t feel much like talking either.

Everything looked the same as it had before. There were still people bringing in the harvest here. Some looked up as they passed. _Don’t you know that the king is dead?_ Her brother was dead. It just kept happening. Her pack died and then she had to run. Even her mother couldn’t stop it, just like her father couldn’t.

At least she _had_ her mother now. Arya wished she had Needle, too. It might not help, but she’d feel a bit better for having it. She wouldn’t be _completely_ helpless with Needle at her side. Just mostly helpless. 

The ride was a harder one than Arya had ever done before, harder even than Father had pushed them after what happened at Darry on the way to King’s Landing. She wanted Nymeria too. “We are trying to outrun two armies,” Lady Catelyn said, when she noticed how tired Arya was getting. “I’m sorry, my sweet.” She did not slacken the pace, either, only insist that Arya eat something to keep her strength up. They kept riding through twilight, only stopping at full dark.

“The horses can’t keep this sort of pace up for long, my lady,” one of their guardsmen said when they stopped. 

“One more day,” Arya’s mother said. “Then we’ll slow our pace a bit and spare the horses. I want to get as much distance between us and the Twins as possible before we do that.”

“Why don’t we take a boat?” Arya asked.

“The rivers will be watched,” Lady Catelyn said. “If we are caught on the open water, by brigands or our enemies, there will be nowhere to run. It’s faster, but not worth the risk.”

Arya remembered how she wanted to sail to Riverrun before. She hadn’t even thought of that. _Stupid._ She didn’t even know how to sail. They weren’t going past her mother’s old home, either. Robb’s wife was there. “What will happen to Robb’s wife?” she asked her mother. It felt odd to say that Robb had a wife.

“I don’t know,” Lady Catelyn said with a frown. “She may not be aware that Robb is dead yet –“ her mother stumbled slightly over the words “ - but that’s only a matter of time. In any case, Riverrun will doubtless be the very first place the Lannisters besiege when word reaches them of what has happened. I can’t do anything to help her, not without risking you even further. My uncle will do what he can. My brother too, if he is there.” 

“What’s she like?” Arya asked, suddenly curious.

“Queen Jeyne? She’s kind and gentle and very pretty.”

“Like Sansa?” Most people said Sansa was nice, even if Sansa wasn’t nice to Arya very often. Everyone loved Sansa. 

“Less than you might think,” her mother said. The mention of Sansa seemed to hurt her, and too late Arya remembered where Sansa was. _Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling, the Tickler, the Hound, Ser Meryn, Ser Ilyn, the Kingslayer, the Imp, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei, Theon Greyjoy,_ Arya reminded herself. If she killed the Imp, Mother could have Sansa back like she wanted.

They didn’t speak any more that night. Arya fell asleep with her head on her mother’s shoulder again.

When they set out again the next morning, she was very sore indeed. But as she had said the day before, Lady Catelyn kept up the hard pace. Everyone looked tired, even the horses. True to her word, though, the pace her mother set the day after that was easier. They were riding better horses now than they were likely to find out here, so it made no sense to ride them too hard. In the end it would be faster and safer to look after them. 

South and east they travelled, back towards King’s Landing and the Lannisters. It felt like going backwards, even though Arya knew they would turn north eventually. They _had_ to turn north eventually. “How far south do we have to go?” she asked.

“Almost as far as King’s Landing,” her mother said. 

They _were_ going backwards.

“I told you it would be dangerous,” Lady Catelyn said. “I’m sorry. The High Road isn’t safe either. With the Lannisters, at least, we may simply be taken captive. The mountain clans would kill us and we have not the men to deter them.” Her mouth twisted into a bitter shape again. “It is my sister Lysa’s doing, in truth. The knights of the Vale would have joined us but for her, while she sits on her mountain and neglects even to keep the roads in order.” 

“But she’s your _sister_ ,” Arya said. “Wouldn’t she help us?" 

Her mother shook her head. “Your brother asked, many times. As did I, when I visited last year. My sister would not welcome me back to the Eyrie now. No, we will take the longer road and avoid the Vale entirely, if we can. We may have to find our way to Gulltown, though.”

So her mother didn’t like her sister either. Or her sister didn’t like her. One of the two, maybe both. And her parents had always said that Arya should try to get along with her own sister better. In the end, Mother couldn’t rely on her family, and Arya couldn’t either. She couldn’t rely on Father or on Robb – they were dead. Jon wasn’t there and her mother couldn’t stop bad things from happening.

She _hated_ this. It wasn’t fair.

“Are we just going to run away?” Arya asked. She didn’t want to go to White Harbor. She wanted Winterfell back. She wanted Jon. She wanted to stay with her mother.

“No,” her mother said. “I meant what I said to Lord Jason. We’re going to make them pay, my sweet. For your brothers and your father – we will make them pay.”

Arya liked the sound of that much better. “Both of us?”

Lady Catelyn fixed her eyes on the horizon. South. Still south. “Yes, Arya. If you like. Both of us.”


	9. Jaime I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long wait, another chapter. Thanks for your patience! No content notes beyond the usual misogyny and chauvinism various ASOIAF characters engage in. Nothing out of the ordinary for the series.

“You have Sansa Stark’s maids in custody?” Jaime asked. “Why?”

“She was in on it,” Cersei hissed. “She killed Joff too. Her and Tyrion. Her maids might know something.” 

“That’s ridiculous. Sansa Stark is what, ten? Eleven?”

“Thirteen and a maiden flowered, the treacherous whore. She fled in the night and left Tyrion behind. The perfect wife for our brother, wouldn’t you say?”

“ _Sansa Stark_ conspired to kill Joff?”

“Are you deaf as well as crippled?” Cersei snarled at him. With her hair down around her shoulders unbrushed and her red-rimmed eyes furious, she looked wild. “Yes, I said. Why else would she vanish the very hour Joff was murdered?”

_That_ would make keeping his vows to Lady Catelyn rather difficult. Daughter accused of regicide and sensibly gone from King’s Landing as well. 

“Why do you care about the little witch?” Cersei demanded. “My son is dead. _Our_ son is dead. If you loved me, you’d bring me her head.”

And Jaime thought better of telling her why he asked. His sister would not want to hear that the price Catelyn Stark asked for his freedom was Sansa’s. Cersei turned her back on him to start straightening the candles they’d knocked over.

He could just about believe Tyrion being involved in Joff’s death, to tell the truth. But a daughter of stiff-necked Ned Stark and equally unbending Lady Catelyn, not so much. Again, better not to say that to Cersei right now. Or even ask about the younger Stark girl.

He would have to ask his father instead. He had been trying not to think of asking his father. And he could not long delay it. He might offend the wench if he did. Gods forbid. 

Brienne had grown steadily more grim as they had approached King’s Landing, as if worried he’d break all his oaths the instant he set his eyes on Cersei. Oddly, her suspicion made him all the more determined to return the Stark girls to their mother. He’d decided to send them back all decked in ribbons, Brienne included, with as many armed men as his father could spare for an escort. That would have shown Lady Stark and her hulking great guardswoman.

He had of course still ordered her to be held in a tower cell. Not much of a way to treat an envoy, really, but he couldn’t have her killing Loras Tyrell if the fool decided to challenge her over Renly’s death anyway. The freshly-widowed not-quite-Queen Margaery and the rest of her family might take his death badly. And then how would he send the Stark girls back? 

The younger one, at least, with any luck. It seemed that he would not be sending the Lady Sansa back now.

_Dear Lady Stark, my apologies for not keeping my vow, but it seems your older daughter may have murdered King Joffrey and then fled from King’s Landing._ That would surely go down a treat with Lady Catelyn. 

Lord Tywin would not long wait for Jaime to attend on him. He didn’t want to be dragged from his bed and brought half-dressed before his father like a disobedient child. He had to go now. Ought he speak of the Stark girls and his oaths? Joff was dead and Tyrion stood accused of it, if the word on the road was true. His father no doubt had bigger problems than a pair of girls. 

His father was waiting for him when he arrived at the Tower of the Hand. He looked rather pleased with himself, too. “I see you have made it back to us,” Lord Tywin said.

“And in more or less one piece, too,” Jaime said, raising his stump. 

He already knew he was going to lie about his reduced capabilities. Showing weakness to his father was just about as foolish as showing weakness to a true lion. _Or a bear._ He didn’t plan to say anything about that to his father either.

“What was the price Catelyn Stark asked for your freedom?” Lord Tywin said. “I find it unlikely she would release you to get you into her empty bed, in spite of what some singers have been telling hereabouts.”

“With two of her sons dead, she wants her two daughters returned safely to her arms. What else would she want?”

“Three,” his father said. “All three of Lady Stark’s sons are dead. Or hadn’t you heard? The Young Wolf fell in battle when his allies turned against him. I could show you the direwolf pelt the Freys sent us as proof, but it’s still amongst Joffrey’s possessions somewhere.”

Jaime raised his eyebrows. His father had no doubt arranged it. “No, we hadn’t.” This would not please Brienne at all. She might well punch him when he brought her the news, for the heinous crime of being born a Lannister. “Well, that’s that, then. The war’s over. Surely we can return the younger girl. I understand that her sister is required here, as soon as she can be found.”

“Impossible.” Lord Tywin swatted the request away as casually as he would a fly. “Arya Stark is far too important for that. Since your brother quite ruined many of my plans, we need the younger girl.”

“You’ve arranged a marriage for her.”

“Of course I have. She will depart to meet her future goodfather’s retinue as soon as I know the roads are safe.”

“Father,” Jaime said, “I swore to Lady Catelyn I would see her daughters returned to her.”

“You are not the one who decides that,” Lord Tywin said. “No doubt Catelyn Stark knew that when she released you and took the risk anyway. I will not give up Arya Stark just to satisfy her mother’s bleeding heart. The woman would regain her senses eventually. As for you, when are you going to take your place in Casterly Rock?”

“I am a knight of the Kingsguard,” Jaime said.

The conversation only deteriorated from there.

Jaime returned to the White Sword Tower disconsolate. Not even back in King’s Landing for a day and he was staring down another broken promise, another reason for people to believe his word was worth nothing. Less than nothing. Yet what was he to do? What _could_ he do? 

Tyrion would have known. Tyrion was in the dungeons pending trial for murdering Joff. And he might well have done it, too.

He went to see Brienne instead, in the end, when he could find no peace in his own quarters. Not because he thought she would have answers for him – not at all. What would the wench know of this particular trouble? But she should know what had happened. No doubt she’d learn of Lady Sansa’s doings easily enough, even locked in a tower as she was.

It was a nice tower cell, though. Far better than his accommodations at Riverrun. No doubt better than what Tyrion was currently enjoying. She had not changed out of her man’s clothing, though Jaime saw someone had delivered a dress and laid it out on the bed. It was blue, meant to bring out the colour of her eyes if Jaime were to guess; someone had been particularly considerate. He wondered if this one fit her better than the gown she had worn at Harrenhal.

“Wench,” he greeted her.

“Kingslayer,” she replied. “How long do you intend to keep me here?”

“Until someone talks sense into Loras Tyrell,” Jaime said. “It could be a while yet. I suggest you make yourself comfortable.”

She turned her back on him for a second, then whirled back around. “What of my lady’s daughters?” she demanded.

Jaime hesitated. “Lady Sansa is lost, I fear. No matter what I do, I will be unable to return her.”

“You swore an oath! By everything you held sacred! By your sister’s life!”

“Yes,” he said. “I did, but Lady Sansa stands accused of King Joffrey’s murder and has fled the city. I _cannot_ return her, no matter what. If she is brought back here, I will ensure she gets a good cell, a fair trial, and, if necessary, a clean execution. You can tell Lady Stark that much at least.”

Brienne’s jaw set hard. “And Lady Arya?” 

“I have spoken to my lord father about her.” 

“And?”

“I will speak to him again.”

She sucked in a breath. “You will give my lady back _neither_ of her daughters? When she freed you from Riverrun in good faith?” 

“Against her king’s wishes. Without her king’s blessings,” Jaime reminded her. Certainly his lord father seemed to think that made no sort of deal necessary. “And I am a knight of the Kingsguard, not the lord of Casterly Rock nor the Hand of the King. It’s not up to me what my father does with his hostages. I will speak to him again. That’s all I can promise now.” 

Those blue eyes of hers bored into him. _I’d send them back_ , he nearly said to her, just to get her to stop. _Joff was nothing to me – whatever Sansa Stark might have done to him, he probably earned it thrice over. Arya Stark? A child. It matters not if their mother has them with her while her son’s kingdom crumbles around them._ But the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard could not say such a thing.

“On your sister’s life,” Brienne repeated.

“Yes, yes,” he said, irritated now. “I swore an oath and for some reason you think that I’ll keep it. Would you really be surprised if I didn’t?”

“Yes.” 

Jaime blinked. “ _Yes_?”

“You heard me, Kingslayer.” 

He had no clever reply for that. A dull flush crept into Brienne’s cheeks as he stared back gobsmacked. “There are many men who would call you a fool for that,” he said at last. _Fool, yourself. Men have likely called her a fool all her life. What’s one more time?_ He left her there.

Arya Stark. What to do about her? He would speak to his father again, as he had promised. He still liked the idea of keeping faith with Catelyn Stark. He liked it too much to let it go so easily.

He ended up asking Cersei after all. His mistake.

“Arya Stark! First Sansa, now Arya. What is your obsession with those girls?”

_They are the price of my freedom. It was Tyrion their mother trusted to return them, but Tyrion’s in a dungeon._ “Lady Stark wanted them back,” he said lightly. “I thought I might give her Arya.”

Cersei sniffed. “The little witch who set her wolf on Joff? Nobody’s seen her since I had her father arrested. She fled the castle and my men were unable to find any trace of her. She’s probably dead in a ditch somewhere in the city.” 

Jaime frowned. “Tyrion swore to return them both if I was freed.” 

“Then our dear brother lied,” Cersei said. “I told him myself that Arya Stark had gone missing. More fool Catelyn Tully for believing him.”

“Does Father know?” 

“Of course he knows. You think I would keep it from him?”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Cersei had _always_ had secrets from their father. They had both always kept things from him. It was the only way. Their father, who claimed to still have Arya Stark. A feigned Arya, he saw now, contrived by Lord Tywin. The gods seemed determined to wring every last drop of pain from Catelyn Stark. The gods, and House Lannister.

Now what was he going to do? His father must not intend Lady Stark to live, either, not when she could bear witness to her supposed daughter’s identity. He shouldn’t be so surprised. It was Lady Stark who had arrested Tyrion. Their father wouldn’t allow that to pass. For the sake of the name _Lannister_ , at least, not from any love for Tyrion.

Jaime could hardly return dead daughters to a dead mother. It might solve his problems. Or it might be another broken promise for men to hold against him. And what would he tell Brienne? He could already imagine the poleaxed look she’d have, jaw hanging open and a wounded look in her big blue eyes.

_That’s what you get for trusting me_ , he thought viciously. _A Lannister pays his debts._

They cut both ways, those words. He could well recall who freed him from Riverrun, who had delivered him to King’s Landing, and who pushed Brandon Stark from a tower in Winterfell. There were debts there too.

The next day he sought out the girl who was supposed to be Arya Stark.

Jaime only vaguely remembered Arya Stark – a skinny, angry scrap of a girl. The girl who had been quietly hidden away in the Red Keep was Northern without a doubt, dark-haired and pretty. Too old, though, about the same age as Sansa Stark, and there was nothing of either Eddard Stark or Catelyn Tully in her features.

“Ser?” the girl asked, as Jaime stood in her doorway thinking. 

“Who are you?” he asked at last. 

She smiled tremulously at him, eyes filled with fear. “Arya Stark, ser. Do you not remember me?”

Whoever she was, she was well-born, judging by her manners. Where _had_ his father found her? “No. I’m afraid I do not.”

The girl lowered her eyes and started to shrink back from him, before remembering herself – or remembering that she was supposed to be Arya Stark – and visibly steeling herself. Jaime took a step back, reminded of nobody quite so much as Rhaella Targaryen. “Tell me,” Jaime said, “To whom are you to be wed?”

“My lord Bolton’s son, Lord Ramsay,” she said, and quickly added, “I am grateful for your own lord father’s assistance in securing the match, Ser Jaime.”

“I’m sure you are,” Jaime replied. “Thank you…my lady. Safe travels on your journey north.”

His father would never let this one go, he thought as he departed. He would never risk this match. He wondered if Roose Bolton knew about the deception – and if he did, whether he cared. Unlikely. It didn’t really matter to him.

As soon as he set out on this quest his oaths were broken. They’d come that way, thanks to his father. When he’d sworn in that dungeon to return the Stark girls, it had been impossible. 

A Lannister paid his debts. There had to be _something_ he could do.


	10. Robb II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes. Another very bad wait. You'd think 2300-ish words wouldn't take so long, but alas. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

The leg was infuriating. It hurt, and it itched, and he kept expecting to be able to move it properly. He forgot sometimes. He’d fallen over, more than once, and picked himself up imagining his father’s concern and his mother’s disapproval. A king had to be able to stand on his own two feet, had to be strong in front of his bannermen.

He didn’t think he could bear another instant of sympathy. He didn’t like how people looked at him now, as he painfully hobbled down the halls of Greywater Watch. There was only so long he could hide the weakness of his leg. Everyone knew it anyway, but to know it and to see it were two different things.

At least word was spreading that he was alive. Lord Reed had few ravens, and fewer that were trained to fly anywhere currently useful, but word had been sent to the Manderlys.

Word of his newfound lameness, too, and his direwolf’s death. The loss of his wolf ached and niggled at him as much as the injury to his knee. The strange dreams had stopped. They had disconcerted him deeply, but he missed them too.

“Do you wish me to send a raven to Barrowton and the Boltons as well?” Lord Reed had asked, voice so sincere and eyes so innocent that Robb had started. It took a second to realise that Reed was _joking._ It had been a long, long time since one of his bannermen joked with him.

“No, no, I don’t think that will be necessary, my lord,” Robb had replied. “We will inform the Boltons in due time.”

It was Lord Reed he was waiting for now. His father’s friend had quietly requested a private audience. A matter of some urgency, he claimed, and in need of utmost discretion. It took some time for Robb to feel well enough to deal with the matter, but eventually he sent for Reed.

The quiet knock at his door came when Robb was sitting upright, studying his maps, trying to decide on his next move. “Enter,” Robb called.

“Your grace.” Reed had a paper with him. A very familiar paper, in fact. The decision it expressed was not one he’d agonised over, but he had wished to make the wording absolutely clear. “I wished to discuss this with you.” 

“My will? You take issue with it, Lord Reed?” And here he had thought that his mother’s opposition to his decision would be the worst of it. Howland Reed had been his father’s friend. What problem could Reed possibly have with naming the last of Eddard Stark’s sons as Robb’s heir?

“We are alone, your grace?”

Robb frowned. “As you asked. Please take a seat, my lord. And, as _I_ asked, have you a problem with my will?”

Reed spread the document out on the table between them. “Yes, your grace.” 

“If it’s a complaint about Jon’s bastardy, I have heard it before.” 

“No doubt. That is not what I must speak to you of. And I must apologise, for it is not easy for me to speak of things long kept secret, and I feel I am betraying your father’s most dearly held confidence. You know, your grace, that I was with him throughout the whole of Robert’s Rebellion?” 

“Of course,” Robb said. Not that his father had ever told them much of Howland Reed beyond his loyalty and his wisdom. And, on one memorable occasion, his valour in facing Ser Arthur Dayne.

“Then you will believe me when I say that I know who Jon Snow’s mother is?”

“I would, though I fail to see what relevance it has to our discussions.”

“All the relevance in the world, your grace.” There was no trace of laughter on Reed’s face, no sign that he might be joking this time as well. “I promised your father that I would take this secret to my grave, but neither of us could have foreseen…well. All that has befallen House Stark in the past few years. And in particular, what you have written here.” 

Robb was rapidly losing patience. “If you have a point, my lord, I would ask you to come to it.” 

Reed sighed. “Just this, your grace. Jon Snow is not your brother, but your cousin, the son of your lady aunt and not your lord father. Lord Eddard claimed Jon as his own to protect him.” 

_My cousin?_ “To protect him from what?”

“Much and more,” Reed said softly. “Knowing that Jon is the son of Lady Lyanna, it is not difficult to reason out who sired him. There are many songs about what happened.” 

It hit Robb like a punch to the gut. “ _Rhaegar Targaryen?_ ” He kept his voice down only with great effort. “Jon is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen?”

“Just so, your grace, and so you see the problem I have with your will.”

Robb hardly heard the words, head spinning. Jon, _not_ his brother? In the face of this revelation it was impossible to be King. “He looks like Father,” he said. Even to his own ears he sounded like a shocked young boy, much to his horror. “Everyone says so. Almost the first thing they ever say about him.” 

“Rickard Stark’s four children looked very much alike. If Jon looks as you say, he favours his mother, and it is well that he does.” Reed smiled, very slightly. “The last time I saw him he was but a few months old.”

“But my father lied?” It was almost unthinkable.

“To protect your cousin,” Reed repeated. “The war was lost and Jon’s half-siblings already murdered along with their mother. Lord Eddard had already fought bitterly with King Robert about their fate. Your lady aunt was on her deathbed and she begged your father to raise Jon as his own son.” 

“So he agreed.” Obviously. Or Jon would not have been raised with them. His father had lied, all these years. To Robb’s mother. To Jon. To everyone. “Does Jon know?”

Robb knew the answer as soon as he asked the question. Jon didn’t know. There was no way that Jon knew. His cousin. They were cousins, not brothers. It didn’t feel right, thinking of Jon as _not_ his brother.

“You would know better than I what your lord father has told him,” Reed said. “But from your reaction, I would assume not.”

Neither spoke for a long moment.

“I am sorry if I caused you grief by telling you this,” Reed said at last. “I simply felt that I must, your grace.”

“I understand,” Robb replied, trying to reclaim the face of the King. His voice, at least, remained steady. “Thank you. You were correct. I should know this.” 

“Have you any plans to deal with this, your grace?” 

Robb took another moment to think. “I need do nothing,” he decided. “I have not made it widely known, but my sister Arya is alive and at Seagard with my lady mother. She is my heir before Jon is.” He paused. “I am content to let Jon’s legitimisation stand. He has been my brother all but a few weeks of his life, if you tell it true, and nobody but the two of us need know otherwise.”

Or the three of them, when next he saw Jon. Jon would want to know. He thought. Jon loved their father (Robb’s father) as much as any of their siblings (Robb’s siblings).

“Your grace,” Reed said, even more quietly than he had before. Robb had to strain to hear his next words. “Nor is Jon a bastard. Your father’s or otherwise.”

“What do you mean –“ he began, and then it hit him. “A secret marriage? You believe that?” 

“Lady Lyanna said as much to Lord Eddard before her death. Your uncle Benjen confirmed her intentions, as did Lady Ashara Dayne, who had the news from her brother Ser Arthur, who witnessed it. Your father believed a wedding had taken place, as do I, yes.” 

Despite himself, Robb could feel the blood draining from his face as he realised the magnitude of what his father had done. If Jon was truly the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen, then Robb’s father had hidden a potential contender for the Iron Throne itself.

In another life, Jon could have been a prince. In this one, Robb’s father had clearly chosen for Jon to be a live bastard rather than a murdered prince. 

Another murdered prince. He had another shock as he realised that Jon _had_ siblings – of course, Reed had mentioned them already - siblings who were not him and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon. A prince and a princess, both dead. He and his siblings were cousins to Jon. _Mother would be pleased to hear me say Jon is no brother of mine._

Though his lady mother would _not_ be pleased to discover how her husband had lied.

“It makes no difference,” Robb said. He had no intention of putting his brother, no, cousin, forward as a candidate for the Iron Throne. He would rather keep his brother as his own heir. If it came to Jon inheriting, he was still the closest kin the Starks had. 

But it would make a difference to Jon. Gods, poor Jon. Jon would be furious. Beyond furious. Robb knew as well as anyone that Jon hated his bastardy, for all he was proud to be a son of Eddard Stark. To learn that he was neither would devastate him.

His father should have been the one to tell Jon all this. Robb shouldn’t have learned it first.

“What will you tell him?” Reed asked.

“The truth,” Robb said. Jon deserved that much from him. He could not trust it to any raven, but gods knew when he’d see his brother –he could not stop thinking of Jon as his brother though he knew they shared no parent – again. That was what he would tell Jon. That he was willing- more than willing- to keep him as a brother. Hopefully that would appease him. Hopefully.

But Reed wasn’t done. “There is more news,” he said. “I thought I ought bring it to you myself. It came but minutes before you sent for me.”

“Speak,” Robb said, eager to be done with the matter of Jon. _What a mess that is. How little I can do to fix it now._

“It seems Joffrey Baratheon is dead,” Reed said. “Murdered at his wedding feast.”

“What? How? _Who?_ ”

Reed passed him a scrawled note, from which he had clearly got his information. “That is the problem of it. Joffrey was poisoned, that much is certain, and Tyrion Lannister and your sister Sansa have been blamed for it.”

Sansa. No. She wouldn’t. Sansa could say cruel things, but she did not hit or pinch or kick. Robb couldn’t imagine her _murdering_ someone. Not even that ass Joffrey. “What has happened to her?” he asked.

“Vanished, apparently,” Reed said, a response that did nothing to ease Robb’s worry for his sister. Arya had vanished when their father was murdered. She had lived, but she had been very fortunate to do so, and Robb doubted she was well at heart. Sansa was gentler by far than Arya. She could not survive in the same way Arya had.

Even that assumed that Sansa had not been quietly murdered herself and her body thrown in the Blackwater.

“She was seen at the feast,” Reed said, apparently seeing the direction Robb’s thoughts were taking on his face. “Not afterwards. Tyrion Lannister was arrested on the spot. Every indication from the Lannisters is that Lady Sansa fled. Cersei Lannister has offered a substantial reward for her return, alive.” 

“It’s unlikely she escaped without help, if she escaped at all,” Robb said. “Send ravens to Lord Manderly, Brynden Tully, and Lord Royce. If she doesn’t try to get home or to Mother’s home, she may go to the Vale and our Aunt Lysa.”

More woe to her if she did go to the Vale. If she could choose her destination at all. If she wasn’t at the bottom of the Blackwater, a knife in her heart. Robb chose to believe, for the moment, that Sansa was alive. Arya had survived. The gods might preserve his other sister as well. 

It wasn’t the same, he knew it in his heart. He hoped Sansa wasn’t on the open road, but safe in the house of one of his supporters, soon to be returned to him. 

If only he could send a raven to his aunt herself. He believed his mother when she said her sister was beyond reason. The best he could do was let the Royces know, and keep them on the lookout for his sister.

“There has been no news from her grace Queen Jeyne, or from Lord Brynden, or from your lady mother,” Reed added, before Robb could ask. For all they said of dark wings and dark words, he had found that no wings and no words could mean worse. From him as well; Jeyne and his mother might both think him dead right now. He hoped his mother, in particular, didn’t hear anything of the sort. He hoped she did not hear what had become of Sansa either.

It was yet another thing he did not wish to dwell on while he could not do anything more to change it. The ravens had been sent. Short of marching his entire army backwards to meet them, that was it. 

Not that he himself was even well enough to march, yet. He was no longer at risk of dying, but the maester said that if he overused his leg, he could worsen the limp he would have anyway. Robb was taking no chances with that. He had to be able to sit a horse.

The army, such an army as it was now, sat here and waited for a cripple’s leg to heal.

“So Tywin Lannister tightens his grip over the throne,” Robb said. Joffrey might have been old enough to prop upright on a throne and call king in his own right, but Tommen was not.

“If he loosed it even slightly since the moment he arrived in King’s Landing,” Reed said. “I saw the man once, as he justified the murders of Princess Elia and her children to Robert before the Iron Throne. But yes. I doubt you will confront him on the field again. He will keep to his own battlefield – words and letters and orders for atrocities.” 

Robb sighed and sat up as straight as he could. It sent a stab of pain through his leg. Not the first for today, and undoubtedly not the last. “You could not have brought me much worse news, Lord Reed,” he said.

“Whatever you decide, House Reed will be behind you,” Reed replied. “I will follow you as I followed your lord father. He was my friend as well as my liege, and I was his friend, as well as his bannerman."

Every declaration of loyalty he heard weighed on him, but this was a different sort of offer. _The worth of Howland Reed._ His father had never had a bad word to say of the man. Reed had clearly kept his secrets. “Very well then,” Robb said. “We will speak more later…Howland.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suspect some of you were waiting for that particular shoe to drop. Thanks everyone for waiting and reading!


	11. Davos I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I didn't actually forget this fic! Have an update!

Eastwatch was a bleak place. It had been bleak when Davos had first sailed there as a boy, and it was bleak now. The black brothers there had different faces but the same expressions: the Wall made for hard men. Such were the faces of the men who assembled to greet them at the dock.

The hardest face of all, belonging to a pox-scarred, broken-nosed man in his middle years, spoke first. “Visitors,” he said. “Been a while since we saw so much as a galley.” 

Eastwatch did not make for courtesies either.

“This is your king,” Melisandre said serenely from her place at Stannis’ side. “By the light of the Lord, Stannis of the House Baratheon, the one true king of all Westeros.” 

“Is that so?”

“That is so.” The words were simple, but the red priestess had a way of making them sound unshakeably certain.

The spokesman for the black brothers snorted. “And what do you want from us, your grace?” The formal address had more than a trace of mockery. He kept his eyes locked on Stannis, whilst his companions looked about at the banners and the ships.

Davos took his chance to speak. “You have it wrong, ser.” The man hardly looked like a ser, but it rarely hurt to err on the side of eminence. “We are here to help you.” 

A bark of laughter clipped off almost as soon as it began. “You’re going to throw Mance Rayder and his hundred thousand back beyond the Wall?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Davos saw his king’s frown deepen. “If that is what is needed here, yes,” King Stannis said.

After that they were soon ushered into the meagre comforts of Eastwatch. Everything looked small next to the Wall that nearly blotted out the sky, even the towers, but Davos thought it shabbier than he remembered from his youth.

That wasn’t even the worst of their problems.

_A hundred thousand wildlings, marching on Castle Black._ Davos hoped it wasn’t true, but the men here all had expressions like they believed it was. When he had read the words _vast host_ all the way back at Dragonstone, he had thought perhaps sixty thousand, perhaps seventy. What did people think was a _vast_ host anyway? “Mance Rayder’s been massing the wildlings for years,” their host told them. Cotter Pyke was a man more of Davos’ own sort, lowborn and rough-spoken. “He deserted the Night’s Watch and made himself King Beyond the Wall. Now he wants to come south. He’s got the men to do it, too.”

Stannis ground his teeth. “Was this common knowledge?”

“The Lord Commander sent word to Winterfell,” Pyke said. “Near two years ago now, before they started down the Milkwater.” The Milkwater, they soon found out, was a river of ice. “Last we heard Mance was bringing _all_ the wildlings down, women and children included.”

They were running. From what, Davos did not know. A hundred thousand people hardy enough to live beyond the Wall fleeing in terror from…something. It was as he had read: _The King beyond the Wall leads a vast host of wildlings._ He had never thought the motive was more than simple conquest.

Melisandre had her thoughts, though. “It is as I have seen,” she said. Even that pronouncement carried an awful serenity. “A terrible enemy lies in wait beyond the Wall. The work of darkness. The Other.”

Stannis scowled at the map. “Not this…Mance Rayder. Something else.” 

Pyke watched them with a sceptical eye. “A few of the men have spoken of dead things walking in the woods. A dead man waking and attacking the Lord Commander, even.” 

“The same Lord Commander who your maester wrote was slain with all his strengths? Or a different one?” Stannis snapped.

“The same, before he left,” Pyke replied. “Word amongst the men. I have none here who saw it for themselves.”

Stannis waved it off. “I would have more from you than gossip. What happened to your Lord Commander?”

The maester of Castle Black had written that they _feared_ Mormont lost with all his strength; the news was moons and moons out of date.

“Mormont led a ranging,” Pyke told them. “Haven’t had one so big for years. He meant to go find Benjen Stark.” 

“Stark?” Stannis asked. “Lord Eddard’s brother?” 

“Our First Ranger,” Pyke said. “Went ranging a year and more ago and never came back. Mormont didn’t find him either, as far as we know.”

Stannis narrowed his eyes. Davos could guess why. Everything they had heard would lead them to believe the Northerners would insist upon Stark leadership from Winterfell, in some form or another. With Lord Eddard dead, his trueborn sons dead, and his daughters missing, Davos knew his king had hoped to recruit either Lord Eddard’s brother or bastard son from their posts at the Wall. To hear that Benjen Stark was gone, that left only the bastard.

He knew his king had hoped for the brother; he had been hoping to avoid angering Eddard Stark’s widow and through her, her brother. _Hoster Tully wanted to see his grandson rule in Winterfell, and Catelyn Stark will not lightly tolerate her daughters being disinherited,_ Stannis had said on the journey north. _Lord Edmure might be a fool, but not so great a fool that he won’t know either of these things._ Not to mention Benjen Stark was a man grown and Eddard Stark's bastard hardly more than a boy.

It couldn’t be helped now. 

“What happened to Lord Commander Mormont?” Davos asked. 

Pyke shrugged. “Died on the ranging. A mutiny at Craster’s Keep. Took most of our fighting men out with him too. We weren’t bloody overwhelmed with recruits to start with.”

And now mutiny. The Night’s Watch needed help more than even Davos had thought they did. This was sounding like an utter disaster. 

“Who has command now?” Stannis asked.

“Bowen Marsh, First Steward,” Pyke said. “Haven’t had the chance to hold a proper election yet.”

“Does he have any knowledge of war?” Stannis pressed. Davos dreaded the answer.

And sure enough, Pyke snorted. “Marsh? He’s counted every sword the Night’s Watch owns. He wouldn’t have a clue who should hold them. From what I’ve heard, man’s riding back and forth along the Wall like a damn fool trying to stop every attack Mance Rayder makes.” 

“Feints,” Stannis snapped.

“You know that and I know that…your grace…but I tell you, Bowen Marsh doesn’t.”

“A _blind man_ should know it.” Davos’ king did not truly believe in any gods, but he had long ago perfected the look of a man praying for patience. He ground his teeth again. Davos considered whether he needed a leather-wrapped stick for his king to chew on. “The main attack will be at Castle Black. That’s where the gate is.” 

“Aye,” said Pyke. “The ravens I’ve had are all signed by Slynt, the maester tells me. The man was only sent here in chains a few moons past, don’t know how he got command as Castle Black.”

“Slynt?” If anything, Stannis’ frown deepened, a remarkable feat, considering. “ _Janos_ Slynt? I know the man. What fool promoted him out of your kitchens?” 

Davos sat and listened. He knew something of war at sea, but almost none of war on land. His king was more than knowledgeable to make up for it. No man knew war as Stannis Baratheon did. And the black brothers knew the territory; Cotter Pyke traced out the lines of roads not on Stannis’ maps. “The rangers use them,” he said. “They’ll get us to Castle Black faster than anything else.”

When the decisions had been made and Cotter Pyke left him alone with his king, Davos said, “I fear I will do you little good at Castle Black.”

“You won’t be going to Castle Black,” Stannis said. “If we are to fight at the Wall we must look south as well. The Boltons will be marching north with their Freys in tow, eager to take what remains of Winterfell. Robb Stark might be dead, but some of his vassals will remain. You must go south and speak for me again, Davos. Win me whatever swords they have left.”

That, Davos could attempt. “What might I offer them?” he asked. “I warn you, the northerners won’t be eager to fight north and south alike.”

“They have no choice. Offer them as many Bolton heads on spikes as you feel appropriate. If they love their Starks so much, they can remember the house’s words. Something must be done before the snows set in, or they will have a winter of a traitor’s rule. Start with Wyman Manderly.” 

Davos didn’t like the idea of leaving so soon, but there was little and less to be done about it. He knew well that he was not the man for a pitched battle. _The Blackwater was enough for me._

He departed Eastwatch on a day as cold as the one he’d arrived. How men lived in such a place as this eluded him. He felt as though his very bones were frozen, and when he’d said as much to the watchmen, they’d laughed at him and told him it was a reasonably warm day for autumn here. He shuddered to think what their winter would be like – but of course, he was likely to find out in the years to come.

The trip to White Harbor was shorter and stormier than the journey to Eastwatch had been. For all the poor weather Davos would rather face the elements than the task that awaited him once he reached his destination.

He had asked the black brothers at Eastwatch about what he was like to find at White Harbor. The answers were on the encouraging side. Manderly and Bolton, he was told, had been skirmishing almost since Robb Stark had marched south in the first place. With the Boltons raised by the Lannisters, the Manderlys would seek another liege to serve. They would need protection from the Boltons and the Lannisters.

Even so, he had never treated with lords like this before. He had been far more comfortable meeting with the lords of the Stormlands, speaking no more words than he had been told to say. He did not know how to be Hand of the King. He did not know how a Hand would build the king’s dreams, or whatever the polite version of the saying had the Hand do.

There would undoubtedly be Freys at White Harbor. The Boltons would need Manderly support as much as Stannis would. He would be speaking dangerous words, and for all he was an envoy, who could trust that Bolton or Frey would respect that? They had turned their cloaks on the field of battle. One might even think twice about sharing bread and salt with them.

The foreboding Davos felt grew worse as he saw the Lannister flags above the harbor itself. An ill sign indeed for his king, and an ill wind it blew in. 

To fail before he even started was almost more than he could bear.

Still, he went to the Merman’s Court. As he walked in, he could feel hostile eyes upon him. There was black drapery on the walls. “You find this house in mourning, ser,” the fattest man Davos had ever seen explained. “My dear son Wendel is dead, my friends tell me.” 

This would be Lord Wyman Manderly, then; Stannis had said the man was too fat to sit a horse. Manderly certainly was that.

And as for Lord Manderly’s friends…there were several of them, lined up around the edges of the room, wearing the sigil of the Twins. Friends indeed. Davos despaired, but only on the inside.

“It grieved us tremendously to bring you that news, my lord,” one Frey said. He did not sound all that grieved to Davos’ ears. Hells, if Lord Manderly’s son had been slain in the battle at Moat Cailin, it would have been Freys or Boltons who slew him.

Davos knew what his king would have him do.

It ended with him in the dungeons of White Harbor. _Well. That was a success_ , he thought, the last thing he remembered thinking before he fell asleep in his cell the first time.

It was a comfortable cell. Better than a prisoner might otherwise expect. Was this what being Hand did for a man? The benefits of a lordship? 

Alone in the dark it was all too easy to lose track of time. He was there for weeks, he believed, perhaps a moon. A long time. A good deal of which he spent meditating on whether he was about to lose his head. Lord Manderly had commanded it, yet the sentence had not been carried out. 

And then at last the door to his comfortable cell opened, and not to the face of one of his jailers, either. A northman – and a lord, by the look of his clothing. His cloak was red and it was pinned with silver.

“Lord Seaworth,” the man said. “Will you come with me?”

He did not see that he had much of a choice. He followed. “Where is it that we are going?” he asked, as the other man collected saddlebags.

“We’re leaving the city,” his companion said. “I am Robett Glover, my lord.”

“Glover,” Davos remembered. “Of Deepwood Motte?” A respected house, if not a power on the level with House Manderly. Their holdings were currently occupied by Ironborn.

“My brother is master there. Quickly, now. Time is short. The feast will not last forever.”

There was a feast somewhere above. Davos could hear its echoes through the caverns. Glover heard it too, and explained, “My lord of Manderly entertains the Freys tonight. He conveys his regrets to you for his shameful treatment. His son Wylis is returned to him, now, and soon the Freys and Boltons will reap what they have sown.”

Davos thought on his comfortable captivity. “A farce? It was all a trick?”

“Aye.” 

What a convincing trick it had been. Davos felt a prickle of anger at Manderly’s treatment, but more relief. He had not failed in his mission after all. “So where is it we go, Lord Glover?”

In the dim caverns, Davos only caught a flash of teeth in Glover’s smile. “We go to see _my_ king, Davos Seaworth. The King in the North.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, well, that's probably the last update of this one until I finish with Disengagement, but call it an earnest of good intent. I hope you enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> It's always great to hear from people! Thanks in advance for any feedback.


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